09:44 – Another mass shooting in Colorado, just down the road from where the Columbine shootings occurred in 1999. News reports differ, with some reporting 12 dead and others 14. All agree that there are many wounded. Apparently, no one in the theater audience was armed, or at least there are no reports of anyone in the audience returning fire. As is too often the case, the shooter was unharmed.
The sudden flurry in kit orders we experienced recently almost certainly resulted from a mention in MAKE Magazine. I couldn’t figure out why things had suddenly heated up, because now should be a dead time. People are on vacation, not thinking about buying homeschooling materials. So now we’re back to normal, with two or three kit orders some days and none or one other days. That’s the level I expected for this time of year. Orders should start coming in faster in August, particularly from mid-August onward through September and into October. Meanwhile, we’re building inventory.
12:15 – Periodically, I need to take a break from doing kit stuff. I don’t normally eat lunch, so I sometimes go back and stretch out on the bed to read or take a short nap. Other times, I’ll go watch/re-watch something on Netflix streaming that Barbara either doesn’t want to watch or doesn’t want to watch again.
Speaking of which, we should finish up series two of Lying Little Pretties tonight. That series is very highly rated, both on Netflix and IMDB, but don’t believe it. The cast is good, but the writing isn’t. In fact, it’s terrible. There are plot holes you could drive a truck through. Hell, a supertanker. At first, it seems that the main characters are simply stupid, but it goes further than that. Even stupid people don’t do the kinds of things the writers have their main characters doing. It’s kind of like those old horror movies where the woman who’s being stalked by an axe murderer (and knows it) hears a sound in the basement. So she goes to the basement door. The light switch doesn’t work. So she goes down the stairs into the dark basement. Even that woman wouldn’t be stupid enough to do the things the main characters do in this series.
For example, one of the characters is a high-school teacher who’s carrying on a sexual affair with one of the main characters, who’s a 15-year-old student when the affair begins. Okay, fine. It happens. A minor character, a friend of the teacher, even warns him at one point that he’s cruising for “a pink slip and an orange jumpsuit”. So, what do this teacher and his pretty little girlfriend decide to do? They sit down with her parents, who are also teachers, and tell them what they’re doing. Geez. And the teacher is one of the *smarter* characters in this series.
The shootings were not “just down the road from Columbine”. I live literally two miles down the road from Columbine and my daughter was a student there when the shooting occurred.
The shootings were across town in Aurora about 14-15 miles east northeast of Columbine High School – a totally different part of the Denver metro area.
I guess it depends on what you take that phrase to mean. The article I read said the two sites were 12 miles apart. I consider that “just down the road”.
It did not take long for the anti-gunners to start their battle cries.
Even if you were carrying, how would you know if it was for real and not a stunt before it was over?
BTW, I vote that we bring back drawing and quartering for the shooter. Instead, he will rot in jail for the next 30-40 years.
Someone who pulls a stunt like that? Look at it as evolution in action. Someone shoots at me, I shoot back.
There is an article on hotair.com about ABC and George Stephanopoulos wondering if the shooter is a member of the Tea Party simply because a member has the same name in the Dever area. How can people like this be in the news business without even checking.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/20/details-about-colorado-shooter-emerge-as-abc-apologizes-for-false-tea-party-reporting/
I suppose it’s just that they so desperately want it to be someone who belongs to the Tea Party.
Spanish 10 year bond yields up to 7.25% today.
There is a reason why Rush Limbaugh used to call him George Step-on-all-of-us.
Yep, it’s a new all-time record. And Italian benchmark bonds are north of 6% and climbing.
What amuses me is how the news media talk about 6% and 7% as though they’re some sort of magic numbers. Apparently, 6% is danger territory, meaning a bailout is likely to be needed, and 7% is the level beyond which none of the current eurozone countries has gone and avoided a bailout.
In truth, there’s nothing magical about those percentages. At 6%, you simply have a very strong indication that few people trust you enough to lend you money. At 7%, you’re in the range where almost no one is willing to lend you money. You’re cut off from market funding sources, and have no recourse other than government bailouts.
In other words, it’s not the cost of the money per se. It’s that that cost indicates how few people are willing to lend to you.
Furthermore, it’s not that 6% or 7% is that bad, but that countries like the US and Germany are able to borrow at rates that are 400 or 500 basis points lower.
There was some chatter about the shootings in the discussion channels in the MMORPG I play. Most were gun-friendly, but the two interesting comments I saw were that guns are okay, per se, but the heavy “military” type guns should be restricted, and that even if people had been carrying would they be good enough shots to hit the shooter, and not people nearby.
I also agree that if this had just been a prank or publicity stunt then that person is taking their life in their own hands.
Even an expert quick-draw spec ops guy would have had a problem with this scenario; unless he’s seen this dude strolling down the aisle or somehow glomming onto him in time. It only takes a few seconds to empty a mag from a semi-auto rifle and slam another one in while also blasting away with a shotgun and/or a handgun, and tear gas or whatever is spreading, too. Those semi-auto shots, as most or all of us here know, come as fast as you pull the trigger, which is pretty fast. So just seconds for this whole thing to go down, maybe a minute, two minutes, tops, and he apparently strolls on out to the parking lot and takes a break from his exertions. And he was evidently wearing some kind of tactical vest which may well stop the usual crunchenticker rounds anyway and head shots are tough through a gas cloud, people screaming and flying all over the place, the perp moving around, and rounds coming your way.
I don’t see how much could have been done to this piece of shit initially; maybe someone could have at least nailed him before those totals got up to twelve and fifty or whatever they turn out to be. At best.
A scientist type, too (see how it’s done? tar the bugger with something to insinuate a whole group is involved or somehow at fault). Oh, he must be a Tea Party maniac; oh he must be a typical Republikan militia guy; oh he must be a deranged ‘Nam vet….oh wait…that one ain’t used anymore, sorry. We’re all dead. Which is what the VA evidently thinks and hopes.
“Even that woman wouldn’t be stupid enough to do the things the main characters do in this series.”
Haven’t you got a book to read? The Road To Reality by Roger Penrose?
He *writes* books, he doesn’t read them!
I am sending down a DVD of the Catholic Catechism and another one of Gregorian chant.
I think he reads and writes. Probably more of the latter. And watches anything with scantily clad women.
In 1987 I did a history unit at ANU called “The Medieval Church” which dealt with the period (IIRC) 1054-1400 or so. Simply the most wonderful course I’ve ever taken, even beats out some of the maths and computer science courses I’ve loved. Anyway, the lecturer said that he and his wife were touring some old monastery and heard a momentary clip (less than a second) of a Gregorian chant. They instantly looked at each other and confirmed that they’d both heard it. Weird.
Got it in one.
Except there are some women I don’t want to see with their clothes off. Amber Marshall and Emily VanCamp come to mind.
Homeschoolers are buying their curriculum for next year now! I am just about done purchasing ours for next year, and I have been selling my old curriculum from the past couple years at a pretty rapid pace on several websites.
Marie
Yep, some of them are buying now, but I’m told that the real peak runs from about mid-August to mid-September. I suppose a lot depends on when a particular homeschooling family starts the school year and whether they tend to buy early or wait until the last minute or later.
“…there are some women I don’t want to see with their clothes off. Amber Marshall and Emily VanCamp come to mind.”
I take it this is some sort of obscure joke. Or are you going gay in your old age?
No joke, and I’m still as straight as ever.
But those women are young enough to be my daughters, and I’d no more want to see them unclothed than I would if they were actually my daughters. Not that I have any objection to nudity per se, but most young women would feel embarrassed and vulnerable if they were seen nude by a man not known to them, and I have no desire to embarrass young women or make them feel vulnerable. Whether they were aware of being observed or not is immaterial; it’s a violation of their privacy.
You’re not serious. Those women are paid adult actresses. Their age is irrelevant.
“But those women are young enough to be my daughters, and I’d no more want to see them unclothed than I would if they were actually my daughters.”
So any woman young enough to be your daughter is off limits? That cuts your pool down quite a bit, gramps. lol
Why should age matter when it comes to going without clothes? Some middle-aged people lived next door to us in Strausberg and had a balcony on their apartment, facing our house. They would come out naked just about any time to have a smoke. Why should anybody be embarrassed to see or be seen naked? Just goes to show how much power that fiction called religion has had on society.
So choosing to become an actress make these women sluts, undeserving of privacy? As far as I know, they haven’t even done any nude scenes.
I don’t care about nudity at all, but for whatever reasons many people, particularly women, are uncomfortable being nude, especially with people they don’t know. I’ll honor that.
Now, if someone chooses to be nude in public, fine. If they don’t care, I certainly don’t. And if Amber or Emily chose to parade around nude on the beach or whatever, I’d certainly enjoy looking. What I’m saying is that I’m not a voyeur.
If only all these nasty religious prudes would dry up and blow away…maybe everyone would then feel oh so comfy and wonderful and strut about au naturel all the time….what a treat! Tell any religious nutters you know to bugger off on this subject!
And why do I get the feeling that folks in good old Deutschland are much more open and cool and free about this….?
Well, for one, the nudism movement started in northern Germany up on the North Sea.
Secondly, religion was so excluded from life in East Germany that younger people have grown up with no knowledge, interest, or even curiousity about it (there were, however, lots of elderly who tried to hang onto their faith without churches). Among our friends in East Germany, never was religion the subject of conversation. Entirely different matter for people we knew from the West.
Interesting also that although even Hitler couldn’t stamp out religion (other than his weird amalgam of National Socialism and the pagan occult) in Germany but the Communists were able to get the job done. Perhaps those in the West who would like to see it expunged entirely from life here as a wonderful thing should study their methods.
Good idea. I’m for that.
Speaking of religious matters, you will probably be interested to know that some historians are beginning to dispute that Galileo was ostracized, tried, and punished by the Church. That is complete fiction they say. In fact, the Jesuits had the absolute best telescopes and studied the heavens more than any other group, and actually confirmed Galileo’s views on the physical universe. What they rejected was his pronouncements of what this meant for theology.
Lemme see if I can find where I read that.
http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/an-interesting-question/
and
http://thonyc.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/but-it-doesn%E2%80%99t-move/
Interesting comment:
QUOTE
Oh, and if heliocentrism is so blatantly obvious and only the stupid Catholics didn’t get it because of their “blind faith”, why did the Chinese, who were unencumbered by both Aristotle and the Bible, have to wait until the Jesuits—of all people—came, rather than vice versa? It’s funny how all these clamorous indictments against the Catholic Church for holding back science somehow amount to a big insult to non-European civilizations, who didn’t have the evil Church to hold them back and somehow still didn’t make it, despite being given a 1000-year headstart.
/QUOTE
Yep, I was aware of the Galileo case; all he got was barely enforced house arrest; the Church didn’t care for him stepping outside his area of competence. Since then, the usual suspects have been braying like jackasses about how cruel and savage its treatment of him was, etc., etc. Malarkey, of course.
Milton stopped by to see Galileo once:
“Sometime in 1638, John Milton visited Galileo Galilei in Florence. The great astronomer was old and blind and under house arrest, confined by order of the Inquisition, which had forced him to recant his belief that the earth revolves around the sun, as formulated in his “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.” Milton was thirty years old—his own blindness, his own arrest, and his own cosmological epic, “Paradise Lost,” all lay before him. But the encounter left a deep imprint on him. It crept into “Paradise Lost,” where Satan’s shield looks like the moon seen through Galileo’s telescope, and in Milton’s great defense of free speech, “Areopagitica,” Milton recalls his visit to Galileo and warns that England will buckle under inquisitorial forces if it bows to censorship, “an undeserved thraldom upon learning.”
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/06/02/080602crat_atlarge_rosen#ixzz21IIEzo1c
“Not that I have any objection to nudity per se, but most young women would feel embarrassed and vulnerable if they were seen nude by a man not known to them…”
Umm, wasn’t it you who said last year that you’d showered with a dozen or so sweeties at Oberlin whose names you didn’t even know? Did you keep your eyes shut the whole time?
Again, that was voluntary on their part.
Of course it was, and if Emily or others choose to bare their charms for the camera it’s voluntary on their parts. They can always say no.
Alright, someone else wants to bring back drawing and quartering for mass shooters:
Time to bring back public drawing and quartering [Fritzworth]
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/331186.php