Month: September 2013

No War! (Well, no additional war)

The Syrians claim a victory. The Russians show diplomacy, The Americans show??? What?

I’m still amazed that the possibility of us going to war, (regardless of what the White House says it would have been a declaration of war to bomb or fire missiles in to another country during their civil war) over what was clearly an internal conflict was ever a matter of discussion.

I’m glad that cooler heads prevailed. I’m somewhat stunned that the cooler head apparently belonged to Vladimir Putin. But I’m glad nonetheless.

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Apple announced new iPhone

Wallstreet unimpressed. Microsoft takes advertising pot shot at Apple and demonstrates yet again that they are completely disconnected from the real world. As an ancillary point they demonstrated that their sense of humor is somewhat childish.

Windows Surface? How’re those sales guys? I saw Microsoft is offering a $200 trade-in for iPads if you purchase one of their tablets. Talk about not being able to give ’em away.

iPhone 5c phones have not sold out during pre-order. That’s a bit of a first for Apple. I find myself wondering if the smartphone market is saturated. None of the smartphone offerings from any manufacturer have been particularly dazzling.

I take that back, Samsung had a dazzlingly bad, perhaps embarrassing is a better term for it introduction of the galaxy s4.

But the smartphones in & of themselves have become somewhat homogenous.

Yes as I’ve mentioned, I’m probably going to go iPhone, but this time around it’s not because its an iPhone, but because I’m heavily invested in Apple tech and it’s just a lot easier to have a single environment to deal with.

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Colorado

Colorado in addition to the flooding also recalled two politicians from the state government over gun control.

Whats amazed the hell out of me in this is that Twitter came alive with Gun control discussions but very little was said on either side of that discussion about the flooding or loss of life.

This re-ignition of the gun control discussion is rather like an endless repetition of a bad Gilligans Island episode. The discussions have begun to bore the hell out of me because they’ve become formulaic.

Gun Control Advocate: Guns are bad, there are too many children dying, guns don’t make us safer, the 2nd amendment is dated and no longer relevant, we need more gun control, no-one needs an assault rifle that can spray bullets to kill people, Only the military needs guns… on and on they regurgitate the same tired and more often than not erroneous sound bites that the media and politicians have spun to reinforce their position on gun control.

Pro Gun person: Criminals are bad guns are not, yes there are too many children dying but it’s not because of responsible gun owners. Guns do make you safer if this were not so why then are “Gun Free” zones also places with the highest national crime rates? Existing Gun control laws would be sufficient IF the state & federal governments would enforce the laws already on the books. Define assault rifle. So called assault rifles do not “SPAY” bullets they are not machine guns, the fire one bullet with each pull of the trigger. The 2nd amendment is not outdated, The 2nd amendment was about providing the ability of the people to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. And on & on until the cows come home.

In point of fact gun related deaths are by the FBIs & CDCs reports overall down. The CDC report really disappointed the Obama administration because it took the legs out from beneath their arguments for stricter gun control.

But since the CDC report refuted the “Collective Wisdom”, very little media attention was given to the CDC conclusions. And the beat goes on…

There’s a saying… don’t confuse someone with the facts.

I’ve gotten bored with the whole gun debate because it’s not a debate. It’s one side misrepresenting one set of facts and the other side trying to refute specious arguments.

At this rate, the politicians will remove the 2nd amendment provisions while no one is looking and screw us all for a couple hundred votes.

Then they’ll wring their hands and rend their clothing when the whole country has a crime rate like Chicago’s and ask what went wrong. I’m sure at that point we’ll hear calls for stricter penalties, laws and god knows what else.

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In other Gun News…

The idiots in the California legislature have sent a bill to the Governors desk that would ban kits designed to make rifles look like assault rifles.

Yep, you read that correctly. It will now be illegal in California to BOLT on plastic or metal bits designed only to make a legally owned rifle LOOK like an assault rifle.

They’d have done more of a public service making people with face lifts gone wrong illegal in public.

This does nothing but demonstrate how almost incomprehensibly stupid the people running this state are. Or it demonstrates that these people do actually understand the difference between and “Assault Rifle” and a regular hunting rifle and have an agenda to remove both from the hands of the public.

They’re also after removable magazines, I have no doubt that they will broaden their focus from rifles to pistols leaving the only legal option for Californians a revolver.

After all a revolver is “old timey looking” and therefore not nearly as dangerous.

They’ll be forced to legislate more when they realize that a .357 magnum is a revolver that contains 8 rounds. Or that a .44 magnum is a revolver too and it contains 6 rounds.

Harry Callahan: I know what you’re thinking, punk. You’re thinking “did he fire six shots or only five?” Now to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world and will blow you head clean off, you’ve gotta ask yourself a question: “Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?

The point is, much like a Ferrari vs a Hundai, it’s not so much what the gun looks like… its how it performs.

Our legislators don’t understand this.

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Condoms in Porn

These have been some back page articles.

Another porn actor has been diagnosed with HIV. And the CONDOM heads are all a dither pointing to this as reason that their condom law in pornography should be extended from just LA to all of California.

What they didn’t point out is that the two porn performers recently diagnosed with HIV 1 man , 1 woman were romantically involved in their private lives. Also not mentioned is that the porn industry required medical screening turned up the HIV before these folks had a chance to spread the infection on set,  and that the screening is routine, broad spectrum (looking for HIV and other STDs)

LA County is noticing a drop in the number of permits for Porn film shoots as well.

While surrounding counties are noticing an increase in permits. Additionally more porn studios are filming completely outside California.

Miami, Phoenix, and Las vegas seem to be popular destinations.

Other studios are noticing that condom porn isn’t necessarily affecting their bottom line. However for aficionados of bareback it’s likely bareback production studios will be leaving LA if not California.

For that matter other studios may simply leave the state “preemptively” anticipating onerous laws and regulations. After all why spend money on permits, in California when you can go to Phoenix or Las Vegas and do your filming unimpeded.

Then there’s this, while you can force condoms to be used in a film… you’re not going to be able to force people to use them in their personal lives. So are these laws really doing all that much good? Or are these laws nothing more than a renewed puritanical movement?

The actors themselves are pretty free to choose how they engage in sex.  I know of several male actors that do solo shows only. The same is true of using condoms or not.

I find myself questioning again and again how many laws like the LA Condom law are about “public safety” and how many are simply about puritanical squeamishness.

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So that’s it folks.

These are the odd bits of news that penetrated my thoughts this week. On the plus side I managed to miss all of President Obamas speeches. On the minus side… HEY! There is now down side to that!