Too Lazy to Fail

Of course, I’m pleased. It did not accomplish much in terms of practical, immediate gains for most of us, and even for those it immediately effects the fight isn’t over (expect news of significant delays in the permit process, draconian restrictions on weapon type, ammo type, liability insurance requirements, etc), but what makes it really significant is that the wholesale question of “Guns for civilians, yes or no?” is not a question that will be asked again. We may not have gained massive ground with Heller in terms of immediate lifting of infringing laws, but a line was drawn. Here. No futher. From this line we can push forward for victories in individual battles without the risk of losing the war.

Some have reminded us that the NRA was against this case moving to the Supreme Court, but is now one of the first to the microphones proclaiming what a great day it is for America. How dare the NRA swoop in as the champion of all of us, when they didn’t want to fight the battle in the first place? What these critics forget is that the decision was 5-4. As some have noted, we were just one heart attack away from a 5-4 ruling against Heller and a recognized individual right to bear arms. Maybe one slip of the tongue in the oral argument. Maybe one bad day for a Justice. That’s frighteningly close, and the ramifications would have been far-reaching and devastating. By opposing the movement of the case into the Supreme Court, the NRA was doing the safe–not irresponsible–thing. Gura and his team scored for us a huge victory, but to go for it required risking everything. Thank God is worked out in our favor.

It’s also been mentioned that had Gore or Kerry been President, the Second Amendment would be gone today. I don’t think that’s the case. The move by Heller’s representation to test the Second Amendment in the Supreme Court was ballsy enough as it was, and very nearly ended in disaster. Had the makeup of the Court been tilted–had, say, Roberts never seen nomination and a liberal elevated in his stead–I would like to think that any attorney not secretly hostile to his client and the ideas his client represents would never take a suicidal run straight to a catastrophic ruling against the individual right.

But it’s over. I’m glad it worked out. Celebrate tonight, because tomorrow there’s still work to be done.

Chris goes into detail about the benefits, misconceptions, and practical ramifications of open carry.

I’d add that open carry isn’t for everyone. Most folks I know work in environments where, even if there’s not a sign posted, there is a written policy against employees going armed. In some places, management is so frightened of the idea of a person going through an extensive background check and receiving training carrying a scary gun recklessly that it becomes a bad idea to even let on that one knows how to work the tools with which to defend one’s family death dealing killing machines. For these folks, open carry is a bad move because one may happen to run into a co-worker or boss while outside the job. People who are afraid of guns may be irrational, but they’re not stupid. Whether you choose to carry a gun at work against policy or not, your anti-gun coworkers may be more likely to cause problems for you on the job because of your lifestyle outside the office.

I’m fortunate to work at a place where my coworkers are aware and appreciate that I’m armed. Though I don’t open carry at work, I don’t worry about the patrons of our establishment (read: congregation) spotting me with a gun if I choose to do so outside of work.

My experiences open carrying here in Jackson have been very positive. Those who are observant enough to notice and bold/nosy enough to approach me about it are usually very receptive and reasonable when I explain the legal framework around carrying a handgun in Tennessee, openly or concealed. I’ve offered on the spot to take more than one person to the range.

Provided one is knowledgeable about the topic and level-headed, open carry is a great way to make folks aware that any law-abiding citizen can have the peace of mind of being armed, and that those who choose to do so are not the psychopaths that the media makes them out to be, but rather reasonable, responsible folks who want to do the right thing for themselves and their families.

Dear Apple, Nokia, and Palm:

I don’t really care which one of you wins a page-loading speed contest when the winner still takes longer than a low-end computer on dialup would take.

I mean, really. 21 seconds? You may have gotten away with that in 1995, but in an age where I can get a 10 Megabit connection $50, this looks kinda silly for technology that’s supposed to be the latest and greatest.

I love my AT&T tilt, but the only connectivity I need for it is for Google Maps and email.

http://www.witntv.com/home/headlines/20142424.html

A pizza delivery driver fought back at a group of suspects who tried to rob him, pulling out a gun and wounding one of them.

Greenville Police say the incident happened early Monday morning at 1105 A Masters Lane when the Chanellos Pizza driver said three suspects began hitting him as he was delivering the pizzas. Police say the delivery driver then pulled out a gun and began to fire. One of the three robbery suspects was struck. Elvis Deans Junior, a 17 year-old student at South Central High School, is listed in stable but critical condition. He’ll be charged with Common Law Robbery and Assault Inflicting Serious Injury.

Police also arrested 18 year-old Thomas James, 18 year-old Sunil Persaud, and 17 year old Kevin Haynie all of Greenville. They are charged with common law robbery. Police also say they charged a 14 year old who they say planned the crime.

The pizza delivery driver was taken to the hospital and was treated and released.

Multiple attackers calling in a fake order and then ambushing the delivery driver seems to be a common occurance. Hopefully Chandello’s gives him an attaboy and a paid week off instead of waiting until the press coverage dies down and canning him.

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080618/1a_bottomstrip18_dom.art.htm

HOLLY SPRINGS, Ga. — The surging price of gasoline has come to this: a “fuel surcharge” on your next speeding ticket.

Drivers caught speeding in this north Atlanta suburb soon will have to pay an extra $12 — to cover $4-a-gallon gas costs for the police officers who stop them.

The City Council passed the fee hike, effective July 1, to offset fuel prices that have eaten up nearly 60% of the police department’s 2008 fuel budget, Police Chief Ken Ball says.

He expects the fee increase, which applies to all moving violations and can be rescinded if gas prices fall below $3 a gallon, to generate $19,500 to $26,000 a year for the town of 7,700.

This means that they expect to ticket 1,625 to 2,166 people this year. That’s between 21% and 28% of the general population. Does a quarter of the population really get a ticket every year?

Holly Springs Mayor Tim Downing says: “This is a self-taxing system. If you don’t break the law, you don’t pay the tax.”

I imagine that a statement like this could only be made if one viewed fines for breaking the law as a primary revenue stream for a community. The excessive number of tickets seems to me to suggest that lots of their tickets are given to through traffic, not citizens of Holly Springs.

EDITED TO ADD: Hey, thanks Wikipedia!

The City of Holly Springs recently annexed all the way down to Sixes Road, and their police have been seen giving out many tickets along this stretch of road, leading some to believe it may be used as a speed trap in order to increase city revenue. Holly Springs was notorious for decades for the speed trap it had set up on the former S.R. 5 prior to the completion of I-575 and has apparently carried over this practice to the interstate.

I guess that in this age of $4 gas, even small-town revenue enforcers police departments have to figure out ways to make ends meet.

Taxes are what a government collects to pay its bills and keep public services running. Fines are primarily intended to punish those who do wrong. When municipality-employed peace officers get tasked with punishing more folks to turn the latter into the former, there is born a deep conflict of interest.

What a boneheaded thing to do. My wife and I maintain a 2/1 split on our three-disc subscription because she watches many more movies and TV-on-DVD releases than I do. I have no interest in her stuff and she only has a passing interest in most of mine. Now that our queues will be smashed up into each other, we’ll have to manually manage what is coming to us (difficult, if not impossible) to make sure we aren’t stuck with an overload of video for one user and media starvation for the other. This move pretty much kills the utility of Netflix for my household, and I can’t understand for the life of me what practical purpose they have behind it. Sure, I guess they could be hoping that people will pony up more dough for additional subscriptions, but if I wanted to spend $35+ instead of $18 on entertainment, I’d get digital cable and a Tivo.

If someone knows of a compelling technical reason for them to do this, please tell me.

When the wife gets home, we’re going to talk this over. We may well decide to cancel Netflix.

As pdb pointed out, the success of this venture is dependent on the victim not tipping the soda before removing the cap. Also, most folks would not open or drink a 20oz soda after noticing that the seal had been broken. Perhaps one could mitigate both of these downsides by using a 2L bottle only partially filled instead?

Another favorite soda-bottle destructive device that was popular at school was the Coke Bottle Bomb, which involved placing a handful of balled up aluminium foil (about the size of peas) into a 20oz soda bottle, then filling the bottle half-full with “The Works” toilet bowl cleaner (available at the Dollar Tree) and closing the cap tightly. Explosion occurs without warning three to seven minutes after mixture, and leaves a glorius green goo all over everything. The explosion is powerful enough to knock out nearby glass, so don’t set it on a window ledge.

From Penny Arcade:

It is impossible for me to save money by changing my own oil. A local dealership will do it for $12.95, which is about what it costs me to buy 5 quarts of oil and a filter.

However, I can (at least in theory) do it myself in half an hour or less, in the comfort of my own driveway, without having to drive to the dealership and then sit for two hours while my car progresses through the queue of vehicles. I can also make sure things are done correctly: a friend recently had a Wal-Mart greasemonkey leave the oil cap off of her car when finishing up, nearly killing the engine. On multiple occassions in high school I had Jiffy Lube guys short my car by two quarts.

Also, if I do things myself I can rotate my own tires in about 10 minutes with no expense, and save between $8 and $15, depending on the shop.

Finally, it’s a good excuse to get in and under the engine of my car, looking for leaks and worn belts. It’s never a bad thing to have a clear understanding of the state of your vehicle.

I had not changed the oil in any car since I had last lived at a place that would permit it, several years ago. I had never done the deed to a Taurus/Sable, either, though I have done just about everything else that can be done by an amatuer to my Sable, usually out of financial desperation and with a frightened eye toward the repair manual. I figured that, not being familiar with the task, it would take me longer than I might expect it to regularly.

So uh, do you know anyone who has given themselves an electric shock while changing their oil? Now you do. Apparently there are exposed electrical contacts about two inches below the base of the oil filter in 97-2001 Taurus/Sable sedans. Who knew? That, combined with a purpose-bought metal wrench not having room to be applied correctly, resulted in fire moving up my right arm, a shower of sparks, acrid smoke, and oil pouring from the still-attached used oil filter.

I was terribly afraid that I had done damage to the electrical system of my car. A quick trip to the auto parts place in my wife’s car, and I returned with the rubber strap wrench that I would have bought in the first place had I not had a fascination with the unique movement of the metal shock-wrench.

Maybe next time it will be a bit less traumatic. I swore at several points that it wasn’t worth it, and that I’d never do it myself again, but hey, it’s worth at least one more shot, because I already bought the oil.

Here’s a close-up of the hole blown in the filter, presumably heated by the electricity running between it and the contacts through the wrench:

Be careful out there, people.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/jun/12/crime-report-cops-chase-germantown-home-invaders-n/

“I think there’s a robbery,” the female voice whispered on the Germantown 911 line. The call was made at about 2:50 a.m. from the home on William Brown.

The woman was upstairs while a group of men was crashing through a window, screaming that they were the FBI and demanding occupants tell them where to find the money. Inside the house was Jeffrey A. Land, who was staying at the house but is not the owner.

Land, 50, one of seven people in the house early Thursday, had gone to bed at about midnight, his Yorkie-poodle mix Sasha asleep in the bed with him. Suddenly, three men — one wearing a headlamp, one with a flashlight and the third with a handgun — were in the room.

“They identified themselves as the FBI,” Land said, adding that the intruders cuffed his hands in front of him before leading him downstairs with the other occupants of the house, who also were handcuffed.

Land initially thought, ” ‘They must be in the wrong house.’ It didn’t dawn on me that it was a home invasion. It was surreal.”

The invaders were in dark clothes, ski masks and gloves.

Similar to what happened in several other earlier home invasions, Land said one of the robbers demanded, “Where’s the money?” According to public records, Thoeurn Chan and his wife, Mon or Mom Hourn own the $652,000 two-story home. The couple 1/2 own two jewelry shops, Crown Jewelry and Handiwork Jewelry, in Memphis.

Mental exercise: You and your spouse are asleep in bed at 3:00 AM. You hear your front door crack and fall, followed by someone identifying themselves as law enforcement and demanding that you get on the floor. You’re an upstanding citizen with no criminal background. Your children are screaming because men with ski masks just poured into their bedrooms and are pointing weapons at them. You have a loaded shotgun by the bed. What do you do?

Part two: You decide to open fire on the intruders, and fatally shoot two of them before you are wounded and subdued. You find out later that they were, in fact, the police, and were supposed to be raiding the meth lab on 2nd Avenue instead of your house on 22nd Avenue. What happens to you?

From Gizmodo via Infosthetics via Make via Boing Boing Gadgets:

This analog traffic signal was in use from the 1940s through the 1970s in Australia, eventually replaced by whatever it is they’ve got going there now (Koala bears on poles holding flash cards, we think). It’s fantastic.

Sure, it’s nifty. The problem with presenting more information to drivers is that you are assuming that most of them will be able to process the additional stimuli and still make safe decisions. I recall reading a discussion that stemmed from a complaint that tail lights on cars were not nearly descriptive enough. The most conservative change proposed was to add an additional light, making indications seperate for “I’m stopping now” and “I’m slowing down”. We can’t even convince a significant portion of drivers to check their mirrors and use signals before changing lanes, or to follow at a sane distance behind the driver before them, so how can we expect people to voluntarily signal before they stop? In most cases where the public safety involves everybody doing dangerous things, the fewer rules you have, and the fewer considerations you make everyone take to comply, the better. If your first thought was how that statement could be applied to handgun carry laws, then move to the head of the class.

I’d love to know how this particular signal worked while it was in service, and where it was deployed. I can almost, almost see it halfway working on slow-moving city intersections, but I imagine that it would be a liability at the end of a large stretch where people need to be able to see its status from a good distance away. Add to that the fact that the red/green/yellow distribution won’t be the same for every intersection, and I just don’t see how even smart folks would be able to make snap decisions based on this signal.

…especially an unexpected dull evening, with the Emergency Party Button.

A gentle reminder to readers that the postage rate has increased, effective today.

New Letter Rate: 42 cents
New Postcard Rate: 27 cents

Boy, it sure is a good thing that the post office doesn’t operate under a statutory monopoly or anything. It would sure stink if, for instance, they’d mandated that nobody can put anything into a box you place on your property except for a single organization. Man, it’d be REALLY odious if nobody could do urgent letter delivery without being required, by law, to charge at least twice as much as the federal monopoly. Good thing we live in a free capitalistic society!

The increase doesn’t affect most of us personally to any great degree. I pay only one bill every month by mail, the rest of them having long since allowed online payment. Where it stinks is at my job with the church, where besides the occasional congregation-wide letter, we send probably 20 to 30 envelope’s worth of routine correspondence every week. Most of these are bills that could not be easily tracked if not done as a formal paper check.

Postal service here in Jackson is a joke, too. Letters from one part of town to another may only take one day, or may take five. Checks that the church mails to vendors routinely take a week to arrive, with 20+ day deliveries not uncommon. More than a few times I have driven by a blue mail drop to find it packed to overflowing and driven back the next morning, to find it still absolutely full. I’m convinced that I have witnessed a mailbox go unemptied for three days. Church policy prohibits me from dropping mail (which is often financially sensitive) in the on-property mailbox, so I get to either deal with unreliable mail drop boxes, or make my way over to the post office every day.

Interesting fact: The USA is the only country on the face of the planet which enforces a monopoly on letter delivery at gunpoint.