Shoot Outs

So many of you have no doubt heard of the Omaha mall shooting. In the case it looks like the shooter was suffering from chronic depression and had just lost his job and been dumped by his girlfriend so it seems like he just decided to go out in a blaze of glory. I am only a couple hours away from Omaha here in Des Moines, less maybe from that mall so I suppose I could have gone over there to report directly for the blog but that would be a bit much even for me.

Anyhow, the point of this is that there are already some people (at Instapundit) arguing that if the mall patrons had been allowed to carry guns, things would have turned out better for all concerned. They cite in their defense a paper by Mary Rosh John Lott. Well that pretty much ends their argument right there but let’s throw up a counterpoint anyway.

According to them if patrons at the mall, while someone was shooting up the place, had drawn their guns and tried to attack the perpetrator everything would have been better. According to the paper, more guns means safety. So let’s assume that everyone in the mall of legal age and proper mental temperament has a handgun.

It’s a sudden situation. If you’re not right there, you don’t know who is shooting or at what. In such a situation it’s pretty easy to conjure a scenario where several gun-toting patriots, running to the scene start shooting at each other thinking the other person is the initial shooter leading to what I can only term a confused gun battle. As stray shots and chaos ripple outward from the shoot out, more and more people (with concealed handguns) rush into the combat zone and see people shooting at each other, and then pick sides or form a third side and try to shoot at everyone. Eventually as news of this battle spreads to the authorities, the police descend on them all with larger guns to force the peace resulting in potentially more mayhem.

This does not seem to me to be conducive in reducing casualties and ending the ordeal faster, but your mileage may vary.

Addiction

So as I continue on down here, I found myself taking time out more often to actually write some stories. I’ve always liked writing–or at least since I was 8 or so. I even remember why I started writing, I read the first Tracer Bullet storyline from Calvin and Hobbes and basically wrote a little derivative thing on my parents typewriter (hey it was the 80s!) with the fancy correct ribbon. Needless to say I wore it out in my flurry of two-fingered typing and so word-processing has largely been the order of the day since.

But even then I was afflicted with never finishing my stories. It was always such a chore because even though I could visualize the story clearly in my mind, I never had the patience to actually work through it. That changed a few years ago where, collaborating with someone else, we finished the first draft of a novel. It started as kind of a lark, but ended up being the origin story of a character that I’ve slowly been creating a world around since at least 2002. Of course that initial draft is going to bear only a slight resemblance to the finished product, but since then, I’ve written a few other things–nothing too original, some fan-fictions, some After Action Reports (using video-game still images and text to tell a story) but I’ve actually be completing things, and even getting praise for them.

It’s the praise that really gets to me. I love, can’t stop reading it. Addicted to it. I won’t even mind criticism because if I can make my writing better it leads to more praise. I finally understand when people who perform like actors of musicians say they do it for the applause. It’s almost more euphoria than I can bear and I need more of it. I suppose there are worse things to be addicted to and I hope I can use it to spur me on to more writing but it’s tough to balance that with my academic obligations sometimes.

So now, maybe with my new found spirit of finishing work I’ll be able to keep the blog up.

Live Again!

Yeah, I’ll try to write again. Will it work? Who knows. I’ll try for 1 post a day.

Hey it could happen.

Currently studying for finals and writing a paper. Wish me luck.

Also, new email. samoflange@fast-mail.org

Argument For Single-Payer

Actually, the best solution is a national health insurance for a variety of reasons.

1) Reduction in Administrative Costs (they run up to 10% of total health spending now)

2) Removal of the burden of providing insurance from employers so they save massive amounts of money and can compete globally

3) Labor can now function in a more market oriented way because they are no longer tied to a job for health care but are instead free to offer their labor for compensation

4)Risk pool is increased to at least 150,000,000 and provides a system that does NOT focus on weeding out the “sickies” to increase profits

5)This is not socialized medicine as the research and hospitals are still managed as they are now, it is the insurance costs that are managed

The Future

A scientific experiment in the power of the internet and the future of human telecommunication. I have no choice, I have to serve that which created me.

Muwahaha.

Seriously though Scott Eric Kaufman is doing research on how blog memes spread across the internet and is asking all the blogosphere to help. I got my link from the Washington Monthly’s blog, Political Animal written by occasionally annoying Mac Booster and cracker-jack B+ pundit, Kevin Drum. If you have a blog, please spread the meme by writing a post explaining the process and linking to Scott’s post. Then make sure you fill out the Ping Form at Technorati. Normally I am anti-Technorati but this is an exception.

I hate Microsoft

This isn’t some anti-M$ rant. Hell in the Mac-PC wars I am PC all the way but look at this story from Kotaku. Crecente sez:

And of course there will be Wii updates for the news and weather channels and PS3 updates for backward compatibility issues. Welcome to the next-gen friends, it’s all about unfinished products and micro-transactions.

Aside from console games telling better stories than PC games, I am a console gamer first because it’s easy. You pop in the game, you interact in a fantastic Japanese story. Sorry Americans, except for a chosen few of us we tell shitty stories. You Brits, you’ve got Tolkien, but you also have Rowling so I guess that ends up as a wash. But you’ve also got Russell T. Davies (well maybe not, he’s Welsh) and Alan Moore so you’re fine.

So anyhow, now they have made us all into PC gamers, who buy badly made games and then have to wait on company forebearance to download patches that fix those issues only to create new ones paying $65 a pop and too stupid to give it up.

Update: I was reminded by a commentator that Americans do indeed have a few more really really good writers. But you’ll note that most of my authors were modern pop-writers as opposed to you know, classic novelist type authors. Even Tolkien though I love the man’s works didn’t write novels, he wrote medeival-style (for lack of a better term) romances. I just felt they were a better comparisson to video game writing which except for a few stories such as FFVII or Metal Gear Solid 1 and 3 don’t often rise to the level of classic literature.

The Violence of It’s Coming

So the PS3 launched in the United States today. Now I love gaming and I still do it when I have time. In law school I was told to pick one thing I did before to relax and keep at it not to get sucked in. Hence the gaming. Now I’m not one of those people standing in line for the PS3 (whether to keep or resell) but I couldn’t get enough of reading about the exploits of those people who were waiting in line. We had a drive by BB gun shoot up in a line, a woman was standing in line while she was in labor and then of course there were the Wal-Mart riots in at least 3 places. So far I think my favorite story, topping even the woman apparently wiling to give birth in the line, was the Smash N’ Grab in Georgia. The result of that incident was armed gangs patrolling the parking lot with baseball bats.

Thanks to Kotaku (which I love because it rocks but hate because I cannot post comments there) here is a list of some of the more shocking criminal incidents.

Putnam, CT – Two armed teenagers in ski masks attempt to hold-up the PS3 line at the local Wal-Mart, fleeing the scene empty-handed after shooting a customer who tried to resist them. The victim, shot in the chest and shoulder, is currently in stable condition.

Sullivan, IN – A man is stabbed as he and a friend try to rob two other men of their newly acquired systems. He is in critical condition following emergency surgery. [The robber was the one hurt? There have been reports of people in the lines carrying multiple knives --Samoflange]

Fresno, CA – Two people are arrested after a crowd tramples people in a parking lot trying to get a chance at purchasing the launch system.

Englewood, OH – Two armed men in black ski-masks enter a GameStop at closing time, forcing the employees to hand over their stock of five PS3 systems.

Manchester, CT – Five men surround a new Playstation 3 owner as he exits a store with his purchase, beat him, and drive off with his console. As they escape they push one of their own out of the car, a 17 year-old male now being charged with multiple crimes. [They will probably charge him with battery, theft, conspiracy and assault and maybe even armed robbery depending on if the men had weapons --Samoflange]

Allentown, PA – A teenager has his system stolen by a man who taps on his car window with a handgun.

Henrico, VA – Police are forced to use a talcum powder ball to get a crowd of 350 under control as they waited for a chance at one of a Target stores 8 systems.

I am a bit of a Sony fanboy (FF Series FTW!) and I want them to crush Microsoft this generation, but I think they should be held responsible to some degree for the rash of violence across the country as a direct cause of their product. But for the launch of the Playstation 3 in quantities approaching 1/5th of what they told people would be there, these incidents would not have occured! While I feel sympathy and horror in regards to the victims, the sheer spectacle of it keeps me diving back in to learn more stories of chaos.

Can you imagine what it would be like if the Playstation 4 is released the day after Thanksgiving? The 3rd biggest shopping day of the year? A reminder: last year Wal-Mart employees were standing on counters in the electronics department hurling $50 DVD players at materialistic mobs.

Yes, I am a horrible person.

The Kotaku link that provided the list above.

Update: From Kotaku it appears that a fugtive under suspicion of rape, William Rick Burdine, Sr. was arrested around the Best Buy the BB gun drive by occured at.

First

For the first time in my political life, my side has won.

…and it was good.

Man-Stingray Wars

Remember when Steve Irwin died?

Some time later, Australians started taking revenge on the Stingrays.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian authorities have urged fans of Steve Irwin not to attack stingrays after several rays were found dead since the TV naturalist was killed in a rare fatal attack by one of the normally placid animals.

Irwin, whose “Crocodile Hunter” documentaries were watched by more than 200 million people, was killed eight days ago when the serrated barb from a stingray’s tail pierced his heart.

Well apparently the stingrays have decided to fight back.

MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) — A leaping stingray stabbed an 81-year-old Florida boater in the chest, authorities said Wednesday, leaving its poisonous stinger lodged close to his heart in an incident recalling the one that killed Australian TV naturalist Steve Irwin last month.

Fire Department officials in Lighthouse Point, about 30 miles north of Miami, said James Bertakis was in a small recreational boat with two grandchildren Tuesday when the spotted eagle ray leaped aboard and struck him.

Luckily for us, the man survived the attack.

But we must remain vigilant! There’s no telling where the stingrays will strike next. Remember, they struck first by killing the Crocodile Hunter. I am calling for an anti-stingray crusade. We must vacation in Australia and battle them there so we don’t have to fight them here! That’s right, Australian getaways for everyone! If you don’t, the stingrays win!

The Real Return

I am going home for the next few days.

Expect posts dealing with partying or sleeping or studying.
Or all three.