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12:03 am
heathyre
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08:52 am
elmo_iscariot
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I know, I know--All I ever talk about anymore is guns...
...but bear with me far a moment.
Lately, it seems like lots of anti-gun webcritters are leaning more heavily on the "NRA is a tiny minority holding everybody else hostage to their agenda" meme. This usually relies on noting that the NRA has 4 million members, remembering that there are 300 million people in the US, dividing, and shouting into a comment thread.
Don't you believe it.
The NRA is a "tiny minority" the same way the NAACP is--except that it's much, much bigger. NAACP has 300,000 members, and "represents" black people, who constitute less than 15% of the American population. NRA has 4,000,000 members, and "represents" gun owners, who constitute about 25% of Americans. 4 million members is _huge_ for a political advocacy group. The ACLU, by contrast, has 500,000 members. So does NOW. The Human Rights Campaign claims 725,000, which evidently counts every person who's ever donated a dollar or more. The largest gun control organizations, the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center, won't even make a claim.
The NRA is an organization supported by small membership dues (about thirty bucks a year) from a vast number of private citizens. It isn't an extremist group or a tool of the gun manufacturers*. It's a member-driven civil rights organization that opposes irrational gun laws that burden our civil rights without reducing violent crime. The fact that almost all gun control laws fit that description** shows that the anti-gun advocates are unreasonable, not the NRA.
The NRA-as-evil-racist-knuckledragging-extremists meme played really well in the 80s, and there's a clinging memory of that perception all through the American political scene. It's time to let it die.
[* - The gun industry does have a lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. You've probably never heard of them, because gun manufacturing is a low profit margin, low volume industry that doesn't have nearly as much money to throw around as people seem to think.]
[** - About the only reasonable gun control proposal in the last few decades was the move to standardize mental health exemption information among the states after the Virginia Tech shootings. The NRA joined the support for that law.]
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12:03 am
heathyre
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12:04 am
heathyre
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01:15 pm
elmo_iscariot
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12:44 pm
gamsby
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Easy Money
There is a Motorola Cliq study group in NYC next month that's paying $125. The catch is you have to own a Cliq (and bring it to the study group).
Amanda did one of these for the Droid and said it was pretty painless.
Let me know if you're interested and I'll send you the info.
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12:04 am
heathyre
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12:03 am
heathyre
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03:54 pm
gamsby
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Secret Satan shopping is done...
And I think my gift is pretty kickin' this year.
On a related note: Willowbrook was packed at 1:30 on a Monday afternoon! I don't even want to think about what that place must be like on a Saturday.
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11:16 am
chap
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Under The Dome
 | Under The Dome by Stephen King – Stephen King does it again. He creates a monster sized book that doesn’t ever get tired or boring.
The basic concept is that a thin see through dome instantly covers a town cutting it off from the rest of the world. The town is cut off from electricity, water, and fresh air (mostly). They can use cell phones to communicate with the outside world, but the US government for the most part was blocking communications to stop a panic to the rest of the country.
The book is basically one of my favorite topics. Post apocalysm. It just happens to take place in Maine where people tend to have generators to give them power, so its not AS bad as it could have been. People inside the dome can still watch TV, and listen to the radio and other manners of creature comfort for the most part, but things start to go downhill as people start to make a power grab.
There are few criticisms I have for this book. At one point it does something I really hate which is to make really smart people do something REALLY dumb. It happens once and ultimately gets resolved, but while it was happening I was pissed.
The other thing kind of revolves around the cause of the dome. I don’t mind the cause of it. I thought that part was kind of cool. The problem I had was that they kind of hinted at the cause throughout the book, and it never deviated from that till it turned out to be what they were hinting at. Hinting is probably to soft of a word. You were pretty much being told what it was without actual certainty. Kind of hard to explain I guess.
The last criticism just came to me. Its a minor technical thing. The town under the dome still had internet access if they had a generator. This is almost an impossibility. The only way that this can work in real life is if you have a cellular 3G connection on your pc. There are laptops and Netbooks that have those built in, but its not something standard for most people (I don’t have it). Even if they had the 3G cards on their machine, the government was blocking Cellular service so that wouldn’t work. Like I said, minor technical thing, but its something that occurred to me.
All in all a great book I highly recommend. Now I’m on to Michael Chrichton’s book Pirate Latitudes. |
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12:03 am
heathyre
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12:03 am
heathyre
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08:01 pm
chap
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Jersey Shore
I finally watched the pilot episode. HOLY CRAP THIS SHOW IS AMAZING! These people together are a train wreck of unfathomable proportions. I think its the best reality show of the decade. I can't think of any tv show that I watched, and an hour later wanted to do nothing else, but watch it again.
I normally don't like the "asshole" on reality shows. I generally hate all of them and think they just need to calm their dumb asses down. That being said i love "The Situation". He's just ridiculously over the top awesome.
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12:03 am
heathyre
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01:34 pm
chap
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Jersey Shore
I've gotta watch this episode to see what the hell happened. I think if I got hit like that I'd wake up in the hospital.
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12:04 am
heathyre
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12:04 am
heathyre
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10:47 pm
gamsby
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I guess this means I'm not getting a new laptop... :-P
It seems that my quick disassembling and drying of the laptop has prevented any serious damage (I'm typing this on it right now).
However, the right half of the keyboard and the track-pad button are sticking a whole lot and I'm not sure what I can do about that.
Any suggestions would, of course, be welcome.
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12:07 am
heathyre
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11:07 am
elmo_iscariot
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Happy in Paraguay
This is incredibly stupid.
But I _defy_ you to watch it without laughing.
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12:03 am
heathyre
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03:07 pm
chap
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Arrested Development complete Series $29
For those that love the series Amazon is selling the complete series of DVD's for $29 today only. 74% off.
http://www.amazon.com/Arrested-Development-Complete-Jason-Bateman/dp/B000JJ3Y78/ref=xs_gb_AEELF0FG8L1HH?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=441937901&pf_rd_s=right-1&pf_rd_t=701&pf_rd_i=20&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=09X0XCKDYZ2J4B2HZ4NM
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10:06 am
chap
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Books
I’m behind and haven’t updated in a bit.  | Hold Tight by Harlan Coben – This is definitely not the typical type of book I’d read, but I gave it a shot because its based in Glen Rock, NJ which is about 2 miles from my house. Even though it was supposed to be set so close, I would have never knew it from reading it. It didn’t sound like Glen Rock at all.
The book follows a married couple with 2 kids (high school age son, and I believe a Jr High aged daughter). The son had a friend recently that committed suicide, and the parents are concerned because the son has been acting funny recently so they wrestle with the idea of spying on him via pc, and cell.
Ultimately they spy on their child and find out that he’s involved in some pretty serious shit, and that maybe his friends suicide wasn’t a suicide after all.
Overall the book was ok/mediocore. I can’t recommend it, but I can’t say its bad either. It just is, and I’ll leave it at that. | 56/50  | Toy Monster: The big bad world of MATTEL by Jerry Oppenheimer – This almost became a Fail book because it didn’t really interest me at first. I’m glad I stuck with it though.
The book mainly focus’s on Barbie and its ups and downs over the years leading up to the Toy Terror summer of 2007 with the big toy recalls/lawsuits.
The first half of the book is mostly about Barbie and some of the inventors and designers, and a few lawsuits which ultimately just didn’t interest me.
After all of that crap was over with it gets into the fight with the Bratz toy line, which was really interesting. Bratz wound up kicking their ass for a bit. Unfortunately for MGA (the maker of Bratz) the creator of the dolls had done so while working for MATEL and signed contracts stating that if he made something while working there it would belong to MATEL. After 2 lawsuits it ultimately was decided that Bratz would be destroyed by the end of this year.
The other major topic of the book was the Chinese toy debacle. Really interesting stuff. All in all I’d say that this book is worth the read if you like reading about IP and lawsuits. | 57/50  | What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell – I’ve really enjoyed most of Malcolm Gladwell’s workup to this book. This book, not so much. It’s not really a book as much as a collection of Essays from his work at The New Yorker. Some of the essays are really interesting, and others, not so much.
In previous Gladwell books they focus on one specific theme, but this covers a lot of things. Most of which are about incorrect perceptions that people hold on different subjects. One of the main essays was about the Dog whisperer (hence the title of the book).
If you have never read Gladwell’s work before I highly recommend you do, but I wouldn’t start with this one because its just not as good. | 58 / 50 words. 116% done! Right now I’m going through Under the Dome by Stephen King. Holy Crap its awesome!
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12:04 am
heathyre
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03:27 pm
gamsby
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Fuuuuuuuuucccckkkkkk!
Last night the landlord's son knocked a glass of wine over on my laptop.
I got it turned off & took the battery out pretty quickly and this morning I took it apart, dried off the inside, and am going to leave it open for a week before putting it back together and turning it on.
I sooo don't need to be replacing a $1,000 laptop right now.
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