Posts

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Ya Never Know. . .

You may never know what effect you have on someone, but sometimes. . .

Interesting guy I met one day back in 2010, here in America’s Third World County™ – just barely here in the county; the town he lives in is about 1/2 in a neighboring state. But anyway, interesting guy. Likes to talk mostly about music, his American Indian heritage (he refers to himself as an Indian, not a “native American” or whatever the current buzz term may be), religion in general and also specifically relating to his heritage, and more.

One day when we had met again by chance, as is our wont, he started asking questions about the Bible and Xian theology as he saw it represented in society, and one of his questions spurred me to pull my lil pocket New Testament out of a pocket in my ADC (All Day Carry) vest in order to use a direct quote from scripture to answer his question.

The last couple of times we have interacted, we began as usual asking how each other was doing. His top answer both times was, “Reading my Bible.” Now, discussions about religion/theology have been more oriented toward him contrasting and comparing observations about Xianity in society as against scripture, demonstrating on his part a serious inquiry.

Ya never know. . .

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“Military Grade”

Confession: while I despise the word “smirk,” primarily because subliterate 20-somethings misuse it so much, I confess to smirking (appropriate use notice! *heh*) whenever I see some company tout a product as “military grade.” (Too often – once is too often, but sadly it seems to be more often than that – “military grade” means “low bid from the company offering the most graft.”)

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Ain’t Got Time for This Crap

Any writer that wants to be paid for their work and yet

  1. Disrespects their readers by typing crap and
  2. NOT hiring a literate proofreader/editor

should be taken behind the woodshed for a wee bit of “education.”

(The spur this time was “Senor” for “Señor”. . . after too many other execrable stupidities. Just not going to read anything else by this producer of stuff unworthy of even being used for fertilizer.)

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Practice Makes Perfect?

Nope. “Practice makes perfect” is common misconception. Practice makes PERMANENT. Only perfect practice can make perfect, so BETTER practice simply makes being BETTER a permanent stepping stone on the path of improvement. Sooner or later, though, one meets one’s physical or mental limits (or both) and consistent best practice just makes permanent the best that one can be.

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To Sum Up. . .

I am constantly amazed at folks who just see no benefit from even such simple maths as algebra, trig, geometry, etc., in their daily lives. There was a brief point in my life, college calculus classes, when I could pretty much just look at a simple math problem and know the answer. (Gave my prof fits, ‘cos I rarely wrote down the steps to achieve the answer. . . cos I hadn’t thought of ’em.) But. . . word problems in that class that attempted to use semi-sorta “real world” situations where different calculus functions could be used to solve things were not so much my metier at the time.

Time passed, as is its wont, and everyday circumstances took on “math meaning” in my perceptions more and more often, until not a day passes that something doesn’t trigger algebraic, “trig-ic” *heh*, differential. . .-ic ?, or whatever thoughts.

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Is It just Me?

Yeh, it’s probably just me. *heh*

Lil hitches in a sci-fi (or really, any) story stand out when the rest is well-written (especially if it’s “hard” sci-fi, which must meet a stricter standard for suspension of disbelief). Here’s a marginal blip: in order to “blend in,” a Chicom operative orders a cheese pizza. . . and eats it. The thing is, while lactose intolerance among those of northern European ancestry has generally been around 5%, among the Chinese, especially the Han, it’s around 90%. A cheese pizza just doesn’t seem normal. To me, that would stand out, not blend in.

*shrugs* My Wonder Woman chides me sometimes about being a bit too detail oriented, so maybe this is just an idiosyncratic problem.

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The Best Thing About Being a Libertarian

The best thing about being a libertarian is not caring what anyone else thinks is the best thing about being a libertarian.

(IOW, you do you as long as you mind your own business and don’t infringe on others’ rights. If you stray from that, the consequences are all on you.)

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Gotta Love Gun-Grabber Morons on Quora

Why love ’em? Because they are the single best argument for NOT surrendering one’s firearms to tyrants, fools, and liars — an even better argument than the existence of the ATF.

Recent exchange:

“Gun violence is the leading cause of death in the United States, so why are guns still legal? There is no reason for anyone to own a gun.”

[response]

Really? Since you start your question off framing it with a lie, then close the frame with an arguable statement, stated as if it were fact, I see no reason to respect your statements, your question, or you.

Per the CDC:

FastStats

“Heart disease: 695,547
Cancer: 605,213
COVID-19: 416,893
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 224,935
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 162,890
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 142,342
Alzheimer’s disease: 119,399
Diabetes: 103,294
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis : 56,585
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 54,358”

Firearms deaths are regularly under, 40,000/year, so alcohol kills more people (liver damage), and we know how well the last attempt to ban alcohol went. Oh, sorry, by “we” I meant anyone who’s not a complete historical illiterate who’s been playing with an autolobotomy kit, so, obviously, not you.

BTW, that “under 40,000” figure includes suicides (who can always find a way), gang violence, and execrable marksmanship from LEOs (interesting lil factoid: ATF firearms casualties at Waco were “blue on blue”).

Facts and Figures

“The human toll There were 39,707 deaths from firearms in the U.S. in 2019. Sixty percent of deaths from firearms in the U.S. are suicides. In 2019, 23,941 people in the U.S. died by firearm suicide. 1 Firearms are the means in approximately half of suicides nationwide. In 2019, 14,861 people in the U.S. died from firearm homicide, accounting for 37% of total deaths from firearms. Firearms were the means for about 75% of homicides in 2018. The other 3% of firearm deaths are unintentional, undetermined, from legal intervention, or from public mass shootings (0.2% of total firearm deaths). There are approximately 115,000 non-fatal firearm injuries in the U.S. each year.”

One last bit of “due respect” for your lie and disingenuous question:

“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.”