"redesigning the Internet"?

The question to ask here is not "AOL already has more than 100 million users. What the heck are you guys doing creating content?"  It's "AOL still has over 100 million users?  What the *&$^%#@! is WRONG with these people?"  With the possible exception of AIM (and I do say possible, because AIM is bizarrely inconsistent in its behavior¹ and horribly unreliable, possibly the worst of all currently existing IM networks), becoming an AOL member in the 21st century is a bit like renting a horse and buggy to carry around in your car so that you can have the retro experience of a horse farting in your face as you drive.

Business Insider is extensively quoted, openly pointing and laughing.

[1]  For example, if I had a buck for every time I've seen AIM reject a message as "too long", seconds before cheerfully broadcasting a message twice the length from someone else...

On correlations

The historic flogging-the-dead-horse argument from the Left's gun control lobby has always been, "Guns (inherently and automatically) cause crime".  And, as the Gun Counter observes, the common assumption is that crime is largely motivated by economic desperation.  Put simply, when times are hard, people on the bottom tiers of society rob and steal to survive.

Yet as real unemployment rises well into double digits and the economy continues to deteriorate, crime has been dropping across the board.  The FBI's Crime in the United States Report for 2009 shows solid drops in all categories of violent and property crime — in the course of a year during which Americans bought 14 million guns and 14 billion rounds of ammunition, and in which state after state made it easier for law-abiding citizens to legally go about their daily business armed.

Now, one cannot necessarily conclude from this alone that increased gun ownership directly reduces crime.¹  However, at this point, even an idiot should be able to see that the mantra that guns necessarily cause crime is a load of old codswallop.

To quote a favorite slogan of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, "Society is safer when criminals don't know who's armed."  And the more of society that criminals have a reason to believe might be armed, the worse the risk for criminals, and the better for all the rest of us — armed or not.

[1]  Although other studies, however determinedly gun control activists stick their fingers in their ears and shout "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU", have repeatedly demonstrated that this is in fact the case.

The Few

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." — Winston Churchill

Seventy years ago, an outnumbered RAF was facing off against the Luftwaffe in the skies of south-eastern England.  Through courage and sheer dogged determination, they broke the back of the massed aerial assault and denied Nazi Germany the air supremacy over the Channel that was vital to the success of the planned Operation Sealion.  Had Operation Sealion launched as planned, Britain's defences would likely have been overwhelmed, and Britain would have fallen or been forced to surrender.  With no bridgehead from which to launch an Allied counter-attack, the D-Day invasions could not have been launched in the form that they were, and the course of the Second World War would likely have been very different.  In light of the Luftwaffe's failure to gain air superiority, however, Operation Sealion was cancelled.

Britain observes this day, September 15, as Battle of Britain Day.  It has now been seventy years.

Never forget The Few.  We all owe them a debt beyond measure.