The US gun control debate made easier?

Just so we make sure we know what we mean, when we say it:    gun      Rather broad to be pro- or anti- about, isn't it.  But there it is.   That definition rather makes the argument about if we should call them firearms instead of guns  rather moot.   Firearms are a type of gun, and thus all firearms are guns.   So guns  covers it all, and more.   Indeed,  guns does indeed include things that are not firearms;  but six of 1, 6 of the other one.

Most of this ends up a gross oversimplification using assumption, sweeping strokes of the pen, and trite tautological truisms. Whatever you'd like to call what this will be, it's not necessarily deep but it just might be insightful a bit at times.  We'll largely go with extremes and with absolutes, in a vague sort of generalized way.  Try and keep it low on the buzz words and catch phrases and personal anecdotal examples that don't really mean much.    That is, follow along with the point, and we might just make it through.

There are two groups, which the names of just might say it all.    We have anti-gun.  We have pro-gun.  

For guns and against guns.   Really.   How spectacularly uninformative pro-gun and anti-gun are on the surface.  For hammers, against swords, no comment on dynamite or chainsaws or ice cream.   Our pro and anti terms have nothing much showing up top but what the reader makes out of them.

Deep within, yes, much is there.    Roll the imagery around in your head.    Consider the explanatory power of the two terms, think of the meaning of what the words actually mean, and the mental pictures and feelings the terms bring up for you.  What do  pro-gun and anti-gun make you think of?   What do you think they make other people think of?  Have you considered the other viewpoint, or do you deny there is one.  Do you ignore that other people just don't agree with you.   Are you unaware that some might decide to use force to make their point.    

If  you aren't fully shoved and squished against one side or the other already, what do you get out of considering both of those -gun terms.   Consider them with at least some measure of free-will, at least somewhat out of a total immersion within perception and preconception and bias.   What's there for you in pro-gun and anti-gun, is it those who 'are for the wholesale slaughter of innocents' versus those who 'wish to be at the whim and mercy of the elite and powerful'?   Or is it something else, in the middle or towards the ends?   Or can you only see one or the other, and naught else but that side?

One way to put it is that the anti- side believes and feels and knows that all weapons, especially and even more so guns, are evil.   They have no use but to kill.   They are for war, for aggression, for all that is bad and base and animalistic about humans.    Guns have no real function, they are an abomination that if only they were gone, things would be peaceful, nice, calm and thus open for humanity to reach its full potential.   Nobody needs guns, and nobody should have guns. Guns in and of themselves are bad, 100%, make no mistake.  Knives and bows and baseball bats and rebar in the hands of a single person can't slaughter dozens of innocents in minutes; but a girl with a .22 pistol and a backpack of loaded magazines can do so.

One way to put it is that the pro- side believes and feels and knows that all weapons, including but not limited to guns, are simply inert inanimate objects.  Tools to be used.    Their primary use is whatever the owner needs it for, but largely the items put power and control in the hands of the individual.    They are for collecting, for enjoying the firing of, for defense, for survival food and otherwise.  One of their uses is against those who would misuse them.   Guns have a history going back some thousand years and are a part of humanity  that could no more be erased than could moveable type, toothpaste, soap, clocks, paper money or spectacles.  Guns are not inherently  good or bad.   People were killing each other for thousands of years before gunpowder was invented by the Chinese around 700 to 850. After that, it was only that  who was holding which end of the stick;  it depended not upon guns themselves,  but on who had more and better of them, what sort of people they were, and under what circumstances.

How easily then might the debate be expressed?    Simply perhaps.   We might say, the sides hate each other.   They each think the other is as nuanced and understanding as a backwards-facing timing-retarded chimpanzee-giraffe DNA-splice wearing a blindfold and earplugs is at building a fusion reactor from pie plates and some rocks that might have some uranium isotopes in them.    Others might say "Of course, that is how things are."  After all, these groups have opposite viewpoints stemming from vastly different places of understanding, conception and perception.   Both are both filled with emotion and extremely unlikely to ever listen to each other, much less agree.  That is somewhat how "the debate" is in many ways phrased, stated and understood, albeit not exactly or directly obviously.  In the end, just as with a lot of things, in various ways all of the ways to describe "the other side" might even be somewhat true.    That there are sides in a matter of opinion, what of that.

Which all seems a rabbit hole of no return to discuss.  How about just making it one question to answer then:   Who is correct, the anti-gun or the pro-gun?    Perhaps to some extent, they both are.  Both of them, even beyond one simplest part of all.  That within their group, alone, on its own, they are fully correct.

Once you bring it out in public, trying to make the two mesh, that's where the troubles are, that's where the complexity lives and breathes.

Free? That's not free.

FREEEEE it screams.

Oh, perhaps sometimes that's a close word to what it is, or a shortcut to the concept that you don't have to put up any money right then to get something, that it's not an outright purchase.  

But here's some things that very much are not free.    See, that's when you get something without paying anything to get it.  

Cell phones?   NO NO NO.    Not free.   When you get a $50 or $350 (or what have you) phone for an $18 activation fee, $24 shipping and $7.50 in taxes, that's not a free phone.    Even if there are none of those charges, when it's in exchange for getting a 2 year service contract, not free.    Buying some $80 or $120 data plan, you are not getting a free phone.  Put them all together, consider the multi-hundreds of dollars of "early termination" and, well you get the idea.

Waiting in line for a few hours to get something, it's not free.

Having to buy two of something else to get one added in, you're getting three items at a cost of 2/3 of full price for each.  None of them are free.

Filling out a bunch of forms, cutting open boxes, photocopying receipts, paying to mail it all, and waiting weeks for a check so you can go cash or deposit it; very much not free.  

Going to dinner with what might turn out to be (and frequently is) some annoying boring moron hitting on you and trying to grope you before refusing to drive you home; you're playing for that dinner!

They say the best things in life are free.   Relaxing on the beach and watching the sunset, things like that.   Those come close.

A two year phone contract, nowhere near it.

And the results are in -- nothing has changed.

On this historic Tuesday past, November the 6th 2012, there was an election in the USA.  

When the dust had settled, far too quickly for many, things ended up....

About the same as they began.

4 to 6 and 1 to 3

Comparing things that some people could see as a similar sort of disappointment, that is a time-honored tradition.     Expectations and memories and time and creativity and creative control and all those sorts of impressions.

Some thoughts then on comparing Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to The Phantom Menace, Revenge of the Sith and Attack of the Clones.  

Sorry, the Eagles did it first, kind of.

Their first four Eagle albums (one per year from 1972-75) were of a different style mostly.  Thus in retrospect, the genius of Hotel California in 1976 almost screamed a band heading different directions.   For those paying attention when HC was released, perhaps a retrospect isn't even needed.   If considering One of These Nights from a musical standpoint, maybe neither is true.

USA Election Day, Hey

As of this post, in 12 days it's election day in the US of A.  

Tuesday November 6th, it's coming down to the long drawn out boring wire.  It's a photographic finish, the shutter is open and drawing in the specks and bits and motes of photons in its gaping maw.    

Wouldn't you know it, there are a number of elections going on that day.   Not just the presidential, but US Senate, US House, a number of gubernatorial and various state legislature, etc.

The big race is of course the presidential.    

Now that is just so very wrong

Although it is essentially (in a manner of speaking) true, and somewhat humorous, almost, in a political sort of way.

Image via and property of T-Shirt Hell

Reality isn't real.

The world is perception from a personal standpoint.  This is often confused with the senses, which are then confused with reality, or vice versa.   Reality being subjective, and thus not real,  because the world we all perceive is a "show".    There's an underlying world that is projected to the senses, a surface display of the physical universe itself.   The surface presented is only an indirect distillation though, a combined simplistic image of the underlying infinitely complex machinations contained within.   We don't have direct contact to it, only an indirect and incomplete contact.   Things that are too large to directly consider in totality.  The senses are as incapable of it as the brain and consciousness comprising those senses are incapable of it.  

In a rather recursive way, our sense of existence is only a link to this surface projection, and through it, to the underlying reality.    So everything's a filtered illusion, not a direct view. 

Such as with the moonlight.  In that case, we do not look upon the sun but at a converted and limited relfection of part of the sun; the radiation that travels through space and gets to us.    Even then, the original light is only the brightest light in the visual spectrum; sight, a single limited sense.    Intensity and content must be removed for the eye to see, or even more abstracted representations must be used indirectly.  Yet even a photograph of the sun itself,  where one can see the surface, has more filtered out than it includes.  Any photograph is nothing but what the eyes and brain can perceive, captured at a sub-second slice of time.  Video is nothing a number of those slices projected  often enough to create yet another illusion.     No matter the visual method, everything but wavelengths of about 390 to 750 nanometers is lost.  There's nothing to hear, feel, taste, smell or otherwise sense either.   All there is, at most, is up to 390 Terahertz of bandwidth detected by the eye and perceived by the brain.

Oh, but you say we feel it as well, the heat.   Yes, that's true, but it is still limited, filtered and incomplete, and that is the point.

Our inner sense of existance is nothing but a perception of a direct link between sensory projection and the underlying mechanisms being projected.   But there is no direct link there.   The process of understanding this all though, ah.    It gives one the ability to in some ways manipulate components of the reality being percieved.   It gives us a way to get an idea of what it is we don't know.   And what we don't know is everything else that's there beyond the shell we can indirectly interact with.   We can in some way manipulate the reality we perceive and ignore that which we can't.

So what we're left with a reality that isn't real; but our perceptions of that reality are indeed very real.   Just not all there is.

That other thing about Barack Hussein Obama II

SWe've previously gone over that he wasn't elected due to being black, but due to being more charismatic than his opponent.    While it's certainly true that being black contributes to one's charisma stats, so does being young, being new, being unknown, being scholarly, being well-groomed and being well-supported by one's backers and the media.

Yet there's another problem here, one that nobody much bothers with, since it's so unimportant in so many ways.  And so contentious in so many others.   Because it involves precise imprecise language mixed with meaningless meaning.    The issue about claiming he was elected because?

He's not black.   

Yummy, yummy, yumm yumm!

Ever since the olden days when dinosaurs walked the Earth, Apple products have been interesting, high-quality, proprietary.... and expensive. Elitist even.  Now with them being the leading consumer-space hardware/software tech company or what have you (mostly due to phones and laptops and MP3 players and music collection software and video players and editors, it appears) and bigger than even Microsoft, they are the new top dog, the new evil corporation and.....   so what?

BHO wasn't elected because he is black.

From time to time, people write or say that the current president and head of the Executive Branch of the USA was elected because he is black.    This is of course not true at all, although it's certainly understandable how some people might think of it as such.  It's notable, it's historic, it's cool.  But it's not true.    Why then was he elected?

eBay, she said.

Recently, an....   acquaintance of mine shall we say, she seemed quite upset.   This post is a somewhat stylized version of the ensuing conversation.   

Some of what she relayed to me was not quite exactly repeatable in polite company, nothing you'd say to the minister or barrister.  Other of what she relayed was almost not or not repeatable at all.    Not that I haven't been known to be quite unladylike from time to time myself in the past of course. 

Although I hesitate to write in certain ways,  I do not feel it's my job nor my responsibility to filter the speech of others, transposed transcripted composed composted or otherwise.   So any quotes will be actual quotes, unedited and verbatim, at least from what I remember of the exchange.   Not that it's anything you probably didn't hear on the schoolyard when you were 8 years of age, but be forewarned.  Although people do, after all, talk this way frequently and few are unfamiliar with it regardless of how much one might disapprove.    This is America after all, and if anything, illustrates expressive speech so highly valued by lovers of freedom everywhere.

5,000,000 shades of red

Or is it just 1......

Boston, Massachusetts, USA -- plus more

All three judges on the First US Circuit Court of Appeals have agreed the Defense of Marriage Act signed by President Clinton in 1996 is unconstitutional. 

Well, sort of, in a way.

Okay, not really much at all.

Marriage is not a right.

Marriage is when the state grants you a consensual and contractual law-recognized relationship.   It's controlled and has limitations.   It is not a right. 

There is no promised, inherent or  guaranteed right to anyone that the state or other institution of authority will either allow them to get married, be married or otherwise enter into some other legal contractual status, marriage-related or not.    Marriage is not guaranteed in the US Constitution in either a legal, social, moral or religious context.   It's not directly anything the 14th Amendment (specifically Section 1) currently covers.   However it might turn out one day,  that's a day in the future that is not today.      Arguments to the contrary, this is not medieval Europe where two parties taking each other as wife and husband become a married couple under common law.   

However, one thing is clear about today.   Right or wrong, advanced or backwards, fair or unfair, normal or abnormal.   It is Wife and Husband.  That is,  5/6ths of the world considers marriage to be between the two, wife in the sense of adult human female and husband in the sense of adult human male.

Movies, actors, directors, fans

There is a vast difference between performers and those who watch them.     An actress or actor  memorizes lines, plays parts, is involved in all the work that goes along with creating a role and a story.    If we're talking about movies, as we are, the scenes are often (usually) not shot in order, many scenes are shot multiple times (often with variations), there are many many hours of waiting and acting and rehearsing.  Special effects, green screens, the sets, all the things the performer sees and deals with that the viewer never does. So there's much more to a movie than just one performer or even all of them.

 In short, what a viewer sees is nothing like what the performer does and experiences in creating something.
 

Very much not impossible at all. PART THREE

Now that we've demonstrated that it's very easy for an Indonesian to persecute and badly treat another Indonesian for just about any reason, racial, ethnic or otherwise; even for no reason at all.  That an Estonian might just want to rob another Estonian just because they don't like the looks of their face.     That hey, "those people" from the other side of town (or the street) are only good for cleaning our shoes, those of us from the correct side.   That well, you're from the Meru, and obviously us Kisii are better than you are.  (Insert your own comparisons; they all work the same, and are equally as worthless in merit.)

What's not impossible?    Why, just ask the media, they'll give you plenty of answers, yes and no.  Some of them even won't be made up. 

Very much not impossible at all. PART TWO

Agree or not with the first part, that is the type of thing we're operating on here as a basis. Well, that's vague.

The operational assumption here is that racism in the standard sense (and in our case here) only counts as racism when there is an assumed inferiority and that it's based upon race / ethnicity.    Further, it  requires that the group of people believing another group of people racially / ethnically inferior are using  that as a reason to mistreat, subjugate, discriminate against the other group.     Without all of those it's something else.

Very much not impossible at all. PART ONE

If there was ever a term that creates a variety of emotional responses almost every time it's used, racism is it.   Yet often the word is used to describe such a range of concepts in such a range of circumstances it's sometimes difficult to get much real meaning out of it.     

Is the word used for so many things it has lost most of its meaning other than as an emotional wedge?   Is it good for anything other than as a way to provoke a strong emotional response?    To delve into that, we first have to do what so often the context does not do; we have to define it to mean something at least somewhat specific.

Boo? No, hahhhahaha.

A great number of interesting things happened in 1966.    Beatrix marries von Amsberg, the Houston Astrodome is built, miniskirts are in vogue, Clay beats Cooper in boxing title fights, the Roman Catholic and Angilican churches meet for the first time in 400 years, Indira Ghandi becomes Prime Minister,  China's Cultural Revolution begins, Reagan becomes governor of California, cigarettes get warning labels, Florence floods,  the SR-71 goes into service, Luna 9 lands on the moon, and the Australian dollar makes its debut.    A gallon of gas is 32 cents and a gallon of petrol is 26 new pence.   Houses cost an average 14,200 USD and 3,840 GBP.      

1966 also is the year The Monkees and Star Trek go on TV.   They and others, such as a serious daytime drama about an orphan on her way to research her past and while being the governess to a young boy in Maine.  Her name is Victoria Winters.

Yes, really.

In light of recent news (US 9th Cir PERRY v. BROWN) there are a lot of arguments going on.   Could we please request one simple thing out of all of it?

Stop calling it gay.