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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) gun_furry
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) orig_rune | |
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I posted about my own experience living through this ban and switch to contractors when I was with DoD on my own LJ. Here's an outside mention of it and the price of it. How 'gun control' aided and abetted Hasan By John Eidsmoe and Ben DuPré Did you hear about the two handguns that inexplicably shot and killed 14 people (one unborn) and wounded 30 at Fort Hood on Nov. 4? To hear some people tell it, radical Muslim and Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan did not kill people – his guns alone did. According to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley – who is now arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court for the power to disarm law-abiding Chicagoans – it was not Maj. Hasan's radical Muslim beliefs that drove him to murder innocent colleagues; it was the fact that "America loves guns." Daley explained, "We love guns to a point that we see the devastation on a daily basis." The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence also jumped at the chance to blame guns first, stating two days after the shootings, "This latest tragedy, at a heavily fortified Army base, ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns in more places. Enough is enough." (Hasan's handguns have issued no statement in response.) By this twist of logic, America's love of airplanes led to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The solution to stopping the 9/11 Islamic terrorists, you see, was fewer people in fewer airplanes in fewer places. As for Fort Hood, the Brady Campaign got it exactly backwards. Generally, thanks to a 1993 Clinton-imposed order, Army posts are an anti-gun advocate's dream, a microcosm of a "gun-free" society: Only the police are allowed to carry weapons, service weapons are signed out only for training or maintenance, and any personal weapons must be kept locked and registered with the base provost marshal. Strangely, the same soldiers whom we trust with automatic weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq are not allowed to carry weapons on an American post or base. And yet all such "gun-control," which the Brady Campaign-types support, did nothing to stop Hasan from sneaking in two personal handguns. Killers with no regard for others' lives are hardly going to blink at anti-gun rules. Gun control only controls the law-abiding. ( Read more... )Current Mood:  aggravated
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schnee | |
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On a happier note, today was my 500th day at the gym, too (the 500th day where I actually worked out, that is, not the 500th day of membership). Ignoring strength workout, as usual, I've spent a total of 27790.2 minutes (19 days, 7 hours, 10 minutes and 12 seconds; an average of about 55:35 minutes per day) doing cardio workout, and (according to what the machines displayed) burned a total of 446652.3 kcal (an average of about 893.3 kcal per day, in turn yielding an overall average of about 16.07 kcal per minute). It's a bit more than I currently do, as there was both a time where I worked out harder and a time where I worked out more, but these days, I generally put in an hour on the exercise bike (plus a five minute cooldown period) and usually get a total of about 900 kcal that way, which is decent enough. Of course, I also still ride my bike — not as much these days because the weather's really bad (it's been raining more or less non-stop for at least about six weeks now, I think, with only a few scattered days in between where it was dry), but it's a bit of extra exercise at least, too. And in the past few weeks, I've occasionally taken walks again in the evening, too, usually going to the lone supermarket that actually stays open a bit longer at least (until 23:00). But anyhow... here's to the next 500! :) Tags: accomplishments, bike, exercise, taking walks, weather, work-out
Current Mood:  hungry
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schnee | |
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My aunt died this morning. She's been fighting cancer for several years already, and she was losing the battle; a week or two ago, she was transferred to a hospice, and she passed away last night, apparently at around 4:15am. I never really was close to her, or really knew her at all, myself, but still, it's a somber occasion. I actually went to see her with my father on Thursday, when she was still alive, but she was asleep, and I'm not sure she was awake much anymore at all in the last few days. The hospice handled things well, though. There was a rose on the floor in front of her room's door to indicate that a death had occurred, and they did her hair again, put fresh sheets on her bed and put some fresh pyjamas on her and all that, and scattered yellow rose petals around her on her bed. And she could remain in her room for a while, too, so that people would be able to come in and say goodbye to her there, which is nice — quite different from what things would've been like in a hospital. Services will be held next week — the week after the one that's coming up now, that is. I wonder if it's possible to rent a black suit jacket somewhere; I don't have one that'll fit me, and buying one just for this occasion now would seem like overkill. (And while my father assures me that the one I got would be fine, I'd really prefer to have something black. It just seems more appropriate.) Ah well. *headshakes* Tags: death, family
Current Mood:  blank
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atomicat | |
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 Well I would say un-fucking-believable but unfortunately it's all too. Dig... the Meade ETX-90 has a pretty shitty mount. It's one-axis, no bracing, and the click of the shutter on the camera is enough to cause enough vibration to make it kinda unusable for real sharp photography, as evidenced by the trace pattern on the right. So, I've been meaning to put together a really nice solid base for it when I had the time and opportunity. I also had the perfect base to work with, a chop saw with a burnt out motor but physically in perfect condition. Dig, solid as hell base, two degrees of freedom, locking mechanisms, and plenty of nicely machined holes for bolts etc etc. So today in anticipation of tomorrow morning's thin crescent moon rising I went to haul it out and DO. So where is it... gone of course, thrown out by my dad for no reason whatsoever other than some stupid irritation, groundless, which he no doubt fed as much as possible for again, no reason whatsoever. HAS to go! Never mind that there's a TON of old iron in the bush, never mind that it was just sitting out of the way under the steps in the barn or something, not like there isn't a hundred and one other pieces of defunct this and that kicking about. Nope, that had to go, and it didn't matter that I'd laid claim to it since he said he was going to throw it away... because of a $20 burnt out motor.  This is the same guy who has on numerous occasions threatened to throw my mom's computer away, because he doesn't like her spending time on it. He's also threatened to throw mine away because the fan noise was irritating him... and he "couldn't figure out how to turn it off." It's an electrical appliance... you hit the off switch... or you unplug the fucker, fucker. This is the same guy who gave away my only childhood toy, if you could call a top of the line Olympus microscope a toy, because I "wasn't using it anymore", never mind the fact that it's mine, and in addition to being very valuable has great sentimental value to me. Gave it to my nieces, as if two pre-teen girls with little or no interest in the sciences would appreciate it. Oh I got it back, but it took long and firm threats of hell to pay if I didn't. Beautiful isn't it, the limits of optical microscopy, you can't get better. (Two - Three) This is also the guy who gave away the arc-welder I had been using basically just to try and gain points with a neighbor or something. When I called him on it, pointing out that the first thing I did the spring I came up here was to haul all the iron out of the bush to finally do these sculptures I'd been planning before I got ill, the answer was the same... "Well you weren't using it." Um... yeah well, I was kind of in the hospital in a coma!!!After spending 30 years or so as a junior-high shop teacher he quit... two years before retirement and took half pension... because his hips hurt (boo-fucking-hoo). Do the math and figure out how much half of his total pension amounts to over the space of 20 years. It's the difference between an ok retirement for my parents and a nice comfortable one. Call it a quarter of a million dollars over those twenty years! My mom of course didn't quit her job as a lab-tech at the senior high-school she'd worked at for almost as long... or her evening job at the Taxation Center during tax season. Had to pay the bills of course, his bills. I've tried to think of something positive to say about him but I can't. Nothing. He's never been anything other than a loud bellowing self-centered asshole who's specialty seemed to be ruining everyone's plans on a whim and making their lives miserable. And now to work, a lot more of it because of yet another one of his acts of mindless stupidity.
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