For the past week, I’ve been playing Onslaught far more than is healthy. Curse you for linking to it, pdb.
Now I link it, hoping that once I’ve lured someone else into the snare, the game may be distracted enough to release me from its clutches. Seriously, give it a try. It’s apparently a newly created game, and is still under active development.
Hint: Read the how to play screen, play a few games, and then go read the hints forum. The first few levels are very, very easy, and you’ll be tempted to abandon it. Humor me by sticking with it until you lose. If you want to speed things up at the beginning, there is a button in the lower right corner that will send the next wave early.
Thousands of people have been ‘fleeced’ into buying neatly coiffured lambs they thought were poodles.
Entire flocks of lambs were shipped over from the UK and Australia to Japan by an internet company and marketed as the latest ‘must have’ accessory.
But the scam was only spotted after a leading Japanese actress said her ‘poodle’ didn’t bark and refused to eat dog food.
Maiko Kawakami, who starred in the Japanese thriller Violent Cop, showed photographs of her pet on a television talk show only to be told it wasn’t a dog - but was in fact a lamb.
The discovery prompted hundreds of women to contact the police with similar problems and the authorities believe as many as 2,000 people have been conned.
‘We launched an investigation after we were made aware that a company was selling sheep as poodles,’ a police spokesman told The Sun.
‘Sadly, we think there is more than one company operating in this way.
‘The sheep are believed to have been imported from overseas - Britain and Australia.’
Poodles are famously used by the rich and glamourous on the continent but are extremely rare in Japan, with many people having little idea what they look like.
The company, which translates as Poodles as Pets, sold the ‘poodles’ for £630, about half the cost of a normal poodle but is now understood to have been shut down.
At last, I have something to use as an excuse for going to bed at 4:00 and getting up at 11:00.
A genetic mutation called the “after-hours gene” may explain why some people are night owls, it is revealed in Science journal today.
It could also hold clues for pharmacologists working to develop drugs to help people adjust to shift work or jet lag.
There are further implications for the study of causes of some psychiatric disorders.
The altered gene, named “after hours” or Afh, is a variant of a gene called Fbxl3, which had not been linked to the body clock that keeps our metabolism, digestion and sleep patterns in tune with the rising and setting of the sun.
By monitoring laboratory mice, scientists noticed that instead of following the typical 24-hour pattern some animals had body clocks that stretched to a 27-hour day.
It was then discovered that their DNA had the after-hours version of the Fbxl3 gene, one of a large family that controls the breakdown of specific proteins within body cells.
Yahoo Music has teamed up with Gracenote (the database from which most applications - like iTunes - pull CD data) to offer a giant, legal lyrics repository with lyrics from several major music publishers.
Searching for lyrics online has always been somewhat of a hit-or-miss affair, with search results driving poor users to pop-up ridden web sites and questionably accurate lyrics. That’s because for reasons beyond my limited mind, aggregating and publishing most song lyrics on the internet was technically illegal. Until yesterday, that is. With Yahoo’s new lyric search, you can count on accurate lyrics drawn from a fairly comprehensive catalog. — Adam Pash
I look up song lyrics all the time, and though Firefox in combination with the Adblock Plus and Flashblock extensions serve to at least detoxify the lyrics pages of pop-ups and flashing zap-the-gangsta ads, I’m still faced with incorrect spelling and capitalization. Using a different lyrics site never helped, since for the most part they all just steal the lyrics text from each other. Sometimes the sites just completely fail to inspire any sort of confidence, returning lyrics that I’m sure they must have misheard.
Since I am not as eloquent as my friends, I will shamelessly cut-n-paste from them, carnival-style. Since I’m a gun owner, my angle of approach should be obvious.
One of the first postings I read on the topic was from the Lawdog, who summed up my initial thoughts on the body count immediately:
I pray that some students went down fighting.
Because as bad as this is — and this is a horror — as bad as this is, if fifty some-odd people were injured and killed by one person whilst on their knees begging like so many Eloi, like a herd of sheep — if no one stood up and fought back, then this is becomes an example of evil.
Not the evil that allows a man to kill other men — although that is here in abundance. No, I am speaking of the putrescent evil which convinces good men not to fight back; the sordid filth of the soul which allows one bad man to prevail against fifty — or 25,000 — good men because good men have been systematically denied the mindset required to meet with, engage and defeat evil — even if all you have is fingernails and rage.
One man. On a campus of 25,000 people. 25,000 people surrounded by fire extinguishers, book bags, pencils, pens, drafting compasses, chairs, broom handles, power strips, ceramics, chains and everything heavy and/or sharp.
One man managed to gun down fifty people — or more — without being stabbed and bludgeoned to death where he stood by the other 24,950 people.
Is a culture without shame, without responsibility, without honor, without consequences the place where we want to raise our children or where we want our parents to see their final days?
Do cameras, metal detectors, security guards, “gun-free zones,” police sweeps, expanded government regulations make us safe or do they all simply blind us to the dangers that lurk of the darkness in men’s hearts?
Are our lives so small and so worthless even to ourselves that we have decided we are not worth defending; that we can just “outsource” our protection to a university or a police department or a government?
Do we, can we, stand up?
Virginia law does not prohibit concealed carry on college campuses, but it also does not prohibit individual institutions, including publicly-owned schools like VA Tech, from regulating what is and isn’t allowed on their campuses. The Ronoake Times told us at the end of January about the death of a bill that would have honored VA Concealed-Carry permits that are currently ignored on campus at VA Tech:
Most universities in Virginia require students and employees, other than police, to check their guns with police or campus security upon entering campus. The legislation was designed to prohibit public universities from making “rules or regulations limiting or abridging the ability of a student who possesses a valid concealed handgun permit … from lawfully carrying a concealed handgun.”
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. “I’m sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly’s actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.”
Yes, I’m sure everyone feels really safe now. It’s a good things guns aren’t allowed on campus!
Here’s one thing that both pro-and anti-gun folks can agree upon: making guns illegal in any given location does not stop shootings in that location. The notion that someone with murder on his mind will obey proscriptions against the carrying of firearms is ludicrous, whether you’re talking about a college campus, a shopping mall, a city, or even an entire country. The only people obeying gun bans are the people you don’t have to worry about–the law-abiding folks. If you declare a location a “gun-free zone”, you basically hang out a gigantic invitation for anyone willing to disobey the decree. What you create is not a safe zone, but a safe work environment for criminals and killers, because they can now be assured of unarmed victims.
He also reminds us that, ultimately, we are responsible for our own safety.
The only thing that ought to matter to anyone, whether they love or hate guns, is the knowledge that in the end it’s a matter of personal responsibility. The question you need to ask yourself is this:
Do I trust others to keep me safe, or do I shoulder that responsibility myself?
No law ever passed has ever had the power to put a gun into your belt, or to remove it from there. You alone choose to carry a weapon, or to not carry one. One day, some nutcase with murderous intent may come calling at your place of study or employment or recreation. Then you will be faced with the consequences of your decision, and all the laws and judges and police officers in the world will be inconsequential at that particular moment.
You alone have to make that call every day of your life, and you alone will face the consequences if that day ever comes. And regardless of your stance on guns or your personal decision in that matter, there will be consequences. Trust the law and the police to protect you, and you may find yourself cowering under a desk and waiting for your turn. Trust your skill with the gun on your hip to protect you, and you may find yourself expelled from school, charged with illegal carry, sued into bankruptcy, or dead anyway.
The choice is yours, and I won’t belittle you regardless of the path you choose to tread. Just make sure you can accept the possible consequences of your choice with a clear conscience.
Let’s not forget the story of Texas House Representative Suzanna Hupp:
On Saturday, October 16, 1991, Hupp and her parents were having lunch at the Luby’s in Killeen. She had left her handgun in her car to comply with Texas state law at the time which forbade carrying a concealed weapon. When George Hennard drove his truck into the cafeteria and opened fire on the patrons, Hupp instinctively reached into her purse for her weapon, but it was in her vehicle. Her father, Al Gratia, tried to rush Hennard and was shot in the chest. As the gunman reloaded, Hupp escaped through a broken window and believed that her mother, Ursula Gratia, was behind her. Instead she watched as Hennard killed her parents and twenty-one other persons. He also wounded some twenty others. As a survivor of the Luby’s massacre, Hupp testified across the country in support of concealed-handgun laws. She said that had there been a second chance to prevent the slaughter, she would have violated the Texas law and carried the handgun inside her purse into the restaurant.
Papa Delta Bravo reminds us in his …unique… way that even if you are prevented from carrying a weapon, you are not helpless:
The appropriate response when threatened is not to cower in fear, or hide in the hopes that the villain takes others first. No! It is ANGER, white hot and pure. It is OUTRAGE. It is righteous FURY. It is whatever it takes to arouse your long dormant Viking berserker spirit from his PC “violence is always wrong” Nerf-society induced slumber and GET SOME!!
Criminals have a number of advantages over normal people. They have as long as they need to become right with the idea of taking another man’s life. Ordinary folks don’t go around thinking about snuffing out a stranger because of love gone bad. We do not enter into an encounter ready to kill someone. Yet when the bell rings, when the blood spills and people are screaming, we must be able to flip on our Klingon spirit like a switch without preparation, meditation or advance warning and slaughter our enemies.
If you cannot do that, if you are emotionally, psychologically, ethically or religiously unprepared to kill another man in the defense of yourself or others, then all the guns in the world aren’t going to do you any good.
And it doesn’t matter that you’re not a cop! You don’t need to be an ex-Ranger or SWAT with super Ninja training to defend yourself. It doesn’t matter that you’re kind of flabby and out of shape (but you should work on that). They’ll never see it coming! Surprise and an Old Testament Wrath are your trump cards.
Not having the gun is also a mindset issue. It shows that you have internalized the misconception that It can’t happen here! Fix yourself.
Thousands of people have been ‘fleeced’ into buying neatly coiffured lambs they thought were poodles.
