Happy Birthday to Wen

Wen the Eternally Surprised is three years old today.  Right about NOW, as a matter of fact.

More "Assault Weapons", less crime

(Snagged from guns)

This wasn't supposed to happen.  When the federal assault weapons ban ended on Sept. 13, 2004, gun crimes and police killings were predicted to surge.  Instead, they have declined.

For a decade, the ban was a cornerstone of the gun control movement.  Sarah Brady, one of the nation's leading gun control advocates, warned that "our streets are going to be filled with AK-47s and Uzis."  Life without the ban would mean rampant murder and bloodshed.

Well, more than nine months have passed and the first crime numbers are in.  Last week, the FBI announced that the number of murders nationwide fell by 3.6% last year, the first drop since 1999.  The trend was consistent; murders kept on declining after the assault weapons ban ended.

Even more interesting, the seven states that have their own assault weapons bans saw a smaller drop in murders than the 43 states without such laws, suggesting that doing away with the ban actually reduced crime.  (States with bans averaged a 2.4% decline in murders; in three states with bans, the number of murders rose.  States without bans saw murders fall by more than 4%.)

[...]

Pinball

So I've just figured out part of what bugs me so much about pinball ... granted, part of it is the sheer mindlessness of pinball, but part of it is that every time I see someone hunched almost motionless over a pinball game (mechanical or software-emulated) repetitively pushing the flipper buttons in return for blinking lights and astronomical point totals, my mind's eye sees a rat in a laboratory cage repetitively pushing a lever in return for occasional food pellets.

Does anyone else see this, or is it just me?

Today's maintenance

• Replaced dying circuit breaker
• Replaced rusted-out kitchen garbage disposal
• Cleaned the kitchen
• Updated named and ncftpd on all servers
• Updated babylon5's kernel
• Patched and installed logjam-4.4.1
• Brought printing back online, now that we can turn on the printer without the breaker tripping

Now, with all of that stuff done, it's time to focus on the important stuff ... celebrating Wen's third birthday.  :)

Still to do:  Diagnose the balky SU3000RM UPS that won't power up.

OK, this chair is SO not going to work.

It's just too short for desk work.  I can't find a comfortable position for my legs, and I'm getting a stiff neck from looking slightly up at my monitor.

As it happens, I stopped by Office Despot last night for some quick price research on chairs, after picking up the replacement garbage disposal and circuit breaker that I installed today from Home Despot, and was interested to see that one of the chairs Office Despot had was identical to the ones we looked at in Costco the last time we were there ... except it was priced exactly $100 higher -- $199.mumble instead of $99.mumble.  You, too, can pay twice what you need to for the same product.  They had a $99 chair that looked like it might work, except for possible clearance problems between the chair arms and the desk that would probably necessitate taking them off.  Wish I could get Costco's $99 chair in the microfiber fabric of Office Despot's $99 chair, though....

This Just In: Spanish-American War Over; Film At 11

"This week, [Republican Senators] introduced a bill to repeal the Spanish-American War levy."  At issue: the 3% "luxury" tax on telecommunications introduced in 1898 to fund the Spanish-American War.