*Spent* gunpowder. It smells different than unspent gunpowder.
I wouldn't want to be breathing that stuff in, though.
Why not? Burning gunpowder smells great. Really wonderful. I may just associate it with lots of great memories, but it's certainly not repulsive, by any means, even to someone who's never smelled it before.
Violence should always be the LAST course of action.
Of course. Always. When violence is necessary, it's only because all other avenues have failed, including running away. Especially running away. I have no problem with anyone thinking me a coward if that's the price I have to pay to avoid taking a life.
shooting generally means intent to kill, as I was trained in firearms at an early age, "don't pull a gun unless you intend to kill something"
Wrong on all counts. Shooting someone means only that you intend to stop them from doing what they're doing at the moment. In fact, stopping them from doing what they're doing is so important that the outcome, whether they live or die, is considered of such relative unimportance that it's no impediment to pulling the trigger. "Intent to kill" is murder. When you shoot someone, you shouldn't care whether they die or not. You just want them to stop. Your training was wrong. The rule is "don't pull a gun unless killing someone is, in context, unimportant."
Is there really ANYONE who deserves to be shot? Perhaps fired. Perhaps face extreme legal action. Perhaps a swift kick to the jewels. But shot, or killed? Don't you find that a little bit extreme, even as hyberbole?
If you'd prefer, I'd be happy to modify that to "needs to be shot" or even "needs so badly to be stopped from what they're doing at the moment that the application of force, even deadly force, is wholly justified." But I think that, in cases like I cited where security officers were taking actions that directly resulted in the untimely deaths of innocents, it is not hyperbole to say they, at that moment, deserved to be shot. This does not (as I stated above) mean that I intend to judge them guilty of a capital crime and carry out the punishment. It just means that the need to stop them is so acute that it doesn't matter if they live or die.
Perhaps it would make you feel better if I pointed out that people, including the security guards in the cites I provided, "deserve to be shot" only at the moment they are committing their crimes. It's a temporary condition. But in that moment, no, I don't think "deserves to be shot" is hyperbole. It's reason. It may even be a moral and ethical imperative.
I'm licensed as an armed guard in the state of Oregon; I've gone through a lot of training with various levels of law enforcement to understand the charge and the responsibility of the sort of work I do.
I guess that explains all the whitewash you're throwing around. Specifically:
I don't know of a single guard who would try to take down someone without really good cause. I sort of don't believe that these people actually exist - I think they're the fictional nemeses who lend bravado and excitement to our friends' exploits, a contemporary ghost or gang of bandits.
That's the core of your post, a bleating and transparent lie that there really aren't security guards who deserve to be shot. You're wrong and you either know it or you're an idiot with his head stuck so far up his ass you'll never see daylight again (which is, actually, a reasonably good description of most rent-a-cops.)
and there are a whole bunch more, but I don't intend to spend the whole morning cutting and pasting links. Just go google for "security guard abuse" and limit your reading to newspapers and academic articles and you can't escape the conclusion that some security guards are so "badge heavy" (the "I've got a badge so I'm God" complex) that they truly need to be shot. When you make articulate postings defending security guards and deny that unfortunate reality, you lose all credibility.
Carrying a gun is to invite people to use deadly force against you,...
Wow. There are enough errors bound up in this that it would take the better part of my workday to untangle them. The basic problem with this conclusion is that it's not supported by the case you just presented.
Specifically, you said that the gun is a problem when you are "involved in some sort of altercation." Agreed. But all (statistically, not counting a couple of outliers that should not effect policy) people who legally carry concealed weapons don't get involved in altercations with the good guys. They both know better and they've been trained better.
In light of the cited case, your conclusion is utterly specious. That's the best I can say while assuming the most favorable (to you) definition of the word "altercation." If, however, you consider that your attitude is applicable to virtually all interaction with the public, then you're just an undertrained, paranoid idiot.
I've authored about 400 magazine articles in my life and I've never had an editor enforce an "overall length requirement" in any fashion except via word count. At minimum, please tell me that if I were one of your students, you'd express your "length requirement" via a word count so that I could at least compose in 14-point type on screen and then just resize the entire document once, at completion, to meet your formatting requirements.
If you actually tell your students to provide you "x pages at y font size" instead of giving them a word count requirement, you're teaching them bad habits. When I retire from my day job in a couple of years and take up writing full time, I won't be writing for any editor who sets length requirements by any method other than word count. Any organization that would hire an editor like that is an organization I wouldn't trust to pay my invoices.
These kids...balk at the thought of a three page paper in 8 point font.
I balk at the thought of a teacher who specifies the font size I should use. Pretty much all word processing software can count words. Tell me how many words you want and I'll make it that long. I'll also make it in the 14-point font that my aging eyes can actually read.
Please tell me you don't actually enforce a font-size requirement on assignments. Please.
...if only IT would drop their one-size-fits-all policy and give trust where trust is due.
It's not a matter of not trusting. It's a matter of responsibility and consequences. The responsibility for making things work falls on IT. No matter what input to the system causes it to fail, the consequences fall on ITs head. Controlling the inputs is the only way to make sure that if I suffer bad consequences, I am doing so justly.
That's not to say that some customers aren't different. In my organization, there are substantial legal penalties for screwing some things up, so we're very careful. Nevertheless, there are situations where autonomy is needed. Developers support themselves but when they need to do something radical, they aren't on the corp lan. Some people absolutely require complete freedom to do as they please for creative or investigative reasons. Those folks get a stand-alone workstation that's air-gapped from the rest of the organization.
As for other folks who want a tool to make their jobs easier, we have a service agreement with their big bosses. Exhaustive studies, constantly updated, have resulted in a continuing agreement detailing with great specificity exactly what tools are required to do the job. If a grunt feels differently, he's directly contradicting his own chain of command and there's a much bigger problem going on than an obstructionist IT staff. If he can get his bosses to approve, then we'll test and deploy the tool to everyone but nobody who shares their job title with 5000 other employees is so special that they need to install their own unique tools.
Good points. I've been using digital since.3 megapixel Sony Mavicas, recording on floppies, cost $750. That camera paid for itself inside a month via increased eBay sales. I think the most important thing is to use the right tool for the job.
Digital is great when the picture-delivery process profits from speed. Photojournalists and especially sports photogs figured that out years ago. Digital (portable iterations; I'm not talking about Leaf backs, here) is also great when ultimate quality isn't necessary and low continuing costs are an advantage. The low end, where most cameras are sold, certainly should go 99% digital since the customers there would be better served by that technology.
But film is great, too. I own a Nikon F5, another very expensive purchase that paid for itself immediately back when I was doing magazine work. I no longer do professional photography but that F5 is still my primary camera for all casual photography. You know what? Using it is one of those sublime experiences. Every time I fire a shot, I'm glad I bought the thing. It fits me. It fits the way I work. I produce some of my best output with it. When I need fast handling (something that's mind-bogglingly expensive, still, in the digital world) with very high quality (and 35mm film is still produces much higher quality output than nearly all 35mm-pattern digital cameras, the only exception being the, again, mind-bogglingly expensive ones) that F5 is perfect.
There's no reason for film to go away. It may be obsolete but that doesn't mean it's ineffective. It's like the Colt 1911. It was the finest fighting pistol ever invented. It remained inarguably so until the coming of the Glock in 1986. It's still wildly popular and still may be the best fighting pistol available, though there are now other valid contenders for that title. It will remain in use until well after phasers become common, just like film will continue survive long after the digital juggernaut has become ubiquitous.
Personally, I'm retiring from my day job in a couple of years. When I do, I'm going to get some 8x10 and 11x14 pinhole cameras and lots of big sheets of film. Them I'm going to start doing contact printing, first on silver then, later, on platinum. I have a feeling that for people like me, film will remain available for many decades to come.
spreading "Joe Smith is gay" is wrong; spreading "Joe Smith is a convicted child molestor" (assuming it's true) is alright...
Really? I don't agree. Having sat on a jury where the charge was aggravated sexual assault of a child, I can tell you that people get convicted of being child molestors for things that don't pass the smell test. Here's an example (just to grab a random example out of today's newspaper) of someone arrested where the actual language of the indictment includes "...She could tell by the way (the accused) was hugging her, he was feeling her breasts with his chest,..." Excuse me?
It takes only a few minutes googling to find kids under 18 convicted of producing child pornography because they taped themselves masturbating or having a bit of sport with a girl/boyfriend. In the state where I live, there's an active lobbying group trying to get the sex offender registry records expunged in cases where the perp and his victim were, respectively, some high school senior (18 years old) and his prom date (17 or less) who just happened to get caught. They've had some success and prosecutors can, in those cases, now choose to refrain from putting convicted people on the list but that sort of common sense is not yet mandatory.
So if it's wrong to say someone's gay when that is intended to inflame the listener and cause them to feel ill will toward the person being discussed, why is the "convicted child molestor" tag worse? Depending on the circumstances, both can be totally innocuous observations that, frankly, are better left unsaid because they don't communicate any information of real value.
This really isn't complex.
Yes, it is complex. It is really, really complex. I don't think MS did the right thing. Far from it. But I do say that we need to be slow and deliberative, we need to think pretty damn hard, before we say "this is right and that is wrong." I was reared in a religious tradition that taught only God can know what is in someone's heart. I think that's true. I think when we judge the actions of others, we take serious risks. The questions are usually more complex than we can ever know.
...the same rules apply now that applied 35 years ago when I started buying photo equipment. Most are places that will screw you one way or another. Some are downright crooks. And there are a few gems that stay in business year after year, garnering more and more loyal customers even though their prices aren't rock bottom.
Personally, I use BHPhotoVideo.com for darn near everything photographic. Some things, like flash brackets, are personal taste problems. You just gotta touch and feel before buying. But for everything else, B&H is either the best or so close I can't tell the difference. They're businesslike (even brusque, sometimes) on the phone but they're also professional and reliable. The number of similarly high-quality online dealers in this market segment can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Actually, you only need two - B&H and Adorama. There are a few specialty dealers who are good for other things and if you need what they sell, they're wonderful. But for the full line of general photo gear available online, it's B&H and Adorama.
The best guidance I know of for buying a camera or related equipment in the U.S. is at
photo.net.
Of course with a car loan you are screwed because cars never gain value -- but if they seize your house and the market will pay twice what is owed on it then they have to send that excess cash to you.
Right. That's why, back in the day when I was involved in things that required me to be at the courthouse a lot, it was common to see some well-dressed man standing on the courthouse steps, waiting. At an appointed hour, he'd pull some paper from a briefcase and start reading, very quickly and very quietly. Shortly thereafter, in a slightly louder voice, he'd say "No bidders other than the primary" (lienholder). Guess what? A foreclosed house just got sold at public auction for a ridiculously low price. If it used to be yours, you still owe virtually all the unpaid balance of the loan. The bank, however, will send in a fix-up crew, slap on a new coat of paint, spray-paint the lawn green, list the house with a realtor, and put a quick extra USD$30K in assets on their books.
No matter how much a particular realty market is skyrocketing, I've never heard of an owner getting their loan paid off and excess proceeds given back to them following a foreclosure. Yeah, it's possible, but I've never heard of it happening.
A crusty, yeasty bun, sliced just so, spread with homemade mayo, sprinkled with freshly ground black pepper, a perfectly done, just-past-rare home-ground hand-formed patty resting atop the mayo, juices mingling to create a perfect sauce, and a thick slice of decadent blue cheese melting over the meat - Yeah, that sounds like gastronomy to me.
The hamburger, by the way, was Julie Childs favorite food. A pretty strong endorsement, IMO.
Commercial ships at sea cannot use heavy weapons by international treaty.
Could you provide a link, please? The first thing I thought when I heard this story was "Where was the trained crewman with the Barrett 50? Or even one of those semi-auto M2HBs you can get nowadays?" I always assumed that commercial ships at sea had a right to shoot back, with heavy weapons if they had them. Then again, maybe I just don't know how you define "heavy weapons." Obviously, I'd like to read up on this so any sources you can provide would be welcome.
Did his views and interpretations change based upon his work?
If so, how?
Unfortunately, by the time I was old enough to begin having serious questions in this area, Alzheimers (or something similar; he was never formally diagnosed) had taken his mind. I know from my father that his father had been a traveling evangelist and had also owned a grocery store from which the majority of his living was derived. In his later productive years, he chose to close the store (and formally forgive a large amount of debt on the books that he had extended to poor families over the course of the Depression) and preach, basically, full-time. His faith was, perhaps, insufficient to sustain him during WW2, a time when he had 4 sons all simultaneously overseas in battle zones. Three were in Europe, two as grunts on the ground and one as a glider pilot for the Normandy invasion. (Later in life, I observed to that particular uncle that I never knew he was insane; he just smiled.) My dad spent most of his service in the Japanese-occupied Phillipines. The only communication my grandfather ever received were ridiculously redacted letters that reportedly threw him into fits of horrible depression. If the Army wouldn't let his sons talk to him, even in letters, what danger must they be in? That question drove him over the edge at times, perhaps even more than if he had known the truth that his sons were, indeed, in incredible danger much of the time. During those years, the removal of his sons also meant the removal of his support network, so he sank into abject poverty (as did the whole family) while living with a daughter in-law. The stress of the war years left him a shell of a man; nothing productive ever came from him again.
I have to think that he fulfilled a purpose with his life but I don't know what it was. I know he paid a terrible price. According to my father and some others who knew him, my grandfather possessed a depth of Biblical knowledge that, during his active preaching years, allowed him to counsel the troubled with an appropriate chapter, verse, and resultant distilled wisdom, all without hesitation. He reputedly could calm and comfort anyone, in any situation. Perhaps that was his gift. Perhaps that was why he studied so hard. I'll never know for sure.
Thanks for asking. It's been too long since I thought of the man.
So you're reading the original Hebrew and Greek texts?
It's amazing what dedication and religious fervor can get you. My grandfather was a hardshell Baptist evangelist in Mississippi and Alabama during The Depression. Yet because he was so devoted to his faith, he taught himself Greek and Hebrew so that he could read older (and presumably less corrupted) versions of the Bible. I always admired him for that. In context, I consider it an amazing achievement. I'm not sure how it profited him, but he certainly thought it was worth the effort.
Wow. That was, um, an excessively intense response to a simple suggestion that you look at things with a slightly broader perspective. Thanks for the exchange; I found it enlightening. I really did. It's always good to be reminded just how far people can go when they make up their minds about something.
Now I think it's time for a review. In my previous post, I said:
You've got your facts right, but your attitude renders you incapable of properly interpreting them.
I think I'll stand pat on that. It pretty accurately sums up this conversation, one that is now concluded on my end.
It's interesting how you're able to mix the insightful with the oblivious. Most people can't do that. You've got your facts right, but your attitude renders you incapable of properly interpreting them. Since essentially anonymous postings on public message boards don't change anyones attitudes, I won't try. Let me just point out the basic contradiction you've presented.
You said that "diabetes is believed to develop when..." any of several insulin-related things go wrong. That's right and there's nothing in there about weight. Later, you say that you know people who got diabetes "as a direct result of 30-40 years of doing nothing but getting fat and lazy." That's not the same thing. So, which is it? Do people get diabetes because of an insulin problem or do they get it because they're fat and lazy?
Here's a hint - characterizing people as lazy and attributing (even in part) an endocrine disorder to that characteristic is, shall we say, counterproductive to the pursuit of effective treatment. Understand, though, that remaining factually correct and accounting for attitudes and lifestyle are not mutually exclusive. A better way to explain to a new or pre- diabetic would run along these lines: "Parts of your endocrine system aren't working right. It's not sufficient for you to eat and move just like normal, thin folks. If that's all you do, you'll get fat. You're going to have to work twice as hard as most people to stay thin and you simply must do so because if you don't, that endocrine problem will spiral ridiculously out of control and put you in a world of hurt. It's not fair, but you got dealt a bad hand. You're going to have to play it perfectly if you don't want to lose the game."
See the difference? Or are you going to persist in being like those asshole ex-smokers who insist on denying that nicotine is addictive just because they were able to kick the habit?
To get something as horrible as (type 2) diabetes simply because you won't get up off your ass and put in some effort to being healthy, is f'ing pathetic...
Congrats on your weight loss but that's not how it works. People get Type 2 because their bodies don't regulate blood glucose levels properly. If your body is going to fail at that, it's going to fail. Being terribly out of shape can cause the failure to be worse and sooner, but it's not the cause. In fact, there's a good deal of research that indicates that the process of becoming diabetic tends to make people fat, not the other way around. Lots of fat folks are fat because they're pre-diabetic; they're not pre-diabetic because they're fat. It's really a vicious cycle and it gets worse once the diabetes sets in. Some of the most commonly used medications for diabetes significantly change the metabolism and cause people to pack on the pounds. There's nothing quite as disheartening as going to the doctor and correctly reporting that you're eating less and exercising more yet gaining weight because of those damn pills.
My point is that it's wrong to blame people for their diabetes. "You let yourself get fat and now it's your fault that you're diabetic" is wrong on many levels. That being said, good habits can put off the BG-regulation failure by reducing stress on the mechanisms that are failing. If you can put off that failure until after you've died of something else, you can, in a way, say that you kept yourself from becoming diabetic. It's not really true, but it's a good, practical approach to the problem, especially if there's a huge family history of diabetes.
Thanks for the info. I'll look them up. However, the pistol I'm seeking isn't the DES69 or any of their mainstream products. It's the centerfire singleshot they made only a few of for 200 meter pistol silhouette shooting. Someday I hope to find one.
I don't blame them for requiring such a large amount. The amount of paperwork on their end was probably enough for a small novel.
I blame them. I'm in Texas where there's no state paperwork. A 4472 is required, just like anything that goes through a dealer. It's easy to find a dealer who'll handle a 4472 transfer for a $25 flat fee. The only additional paperwork required is filing just one single form that describes the gun. Approval comes back and the shipment is made. The reason it's so simple is that, legally, the dealer is not doing the importation. I am. The dealer is only there to accept the shipment and do the transfer form.
Most FFL holders do not understand this. They think that *they* are the importer of the firearm for resale. In that case, there is a mountain of paperwork, guns may have to be re-marked with new import stamps in the metal, etc. For a dealer to import a gun for resale is a big deal. But for a dealer to facilitate importation by a private individual of a gun not intended for resale is a no-brainer. You just have to keep looking until you find a dealer who will believe you when you explain the process to them.
For extra bonus points, can anyone tell me who is statutorily exempted from these requirements and may import any firearm, including machine guns, by simply tossing said gun in their baggage when returning from abroad, declaring it at customs and showing their ID? It's not the President or anyone in the Executive Branch. Any ideas?
The answer is: flag officers in the U.S. military. I've often wondered how frequently they take advantage of that little perk. For "normal" guns, there's probably no way to tell. For machine guns, though, they'd create a problem for their heirs. Upon their death, literally no one would have a legal right to inherit the gun. It would have to be surrendered to the BATFE.
What firearms can you get from Australia that you can't pick up cheaper in the US?
Used guns. A few years ago, the relative strength of our dollars made it possible to get a SIG P240 in.38 Special from Australia for about 850 Australian dollars. IIRC, that was about 500 American. At the time, the same gun in the U.S., if you could find one, would have easily topped a thousand dollars. Same story on a Hammerli 120, which is rare and pricy in the U.S. Those were my two failures.
To be fair, though, the ATF-related problems were serious, too. Theoretically, it's not that difficult, but the ATF has been such a pain in the ass to so many gun dealers over the years that those dealers are terribly gun-shy. (I say, that's a joke, son.) They aren't willing to do any out-of-the-ordinary paperwork and draw attention to themselves. The only one I found who would do the job (and I limited the search to my state since a concurrent state-to-state transfer adds exponentially to the complications) quoted a minimum of $350 to start the paperwork and wanted me to sign a contract saying that once they had the gun in hand they could sell it to me at any price they wanted, nevermind that I would have already paid the foreign dealer directly. No thanks. FFLs are limited forms of government-granted monopoly and come with all the problems that implies.
Slightly offtopic - If anyone has a production-class silhouette pistol made by Unique, any chambering, anywhere in the world, at anything approaching a reasonable price, then I'm buying. (French readers, I'm talking to you.) Please post back here.
I just wish it were easier to get guns out of Australia. I've attempted to import pistols from Australia to the U.S. twice in the past and failed both times because there was just too much red tape, too many levels of approvals, and time frames were just ridiculously long. With the way the Australian government seems to want to cut down on the number of guns, you'd think they'd work really hard to make it easy to ship them out of the country. But noooo.
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Why not? Burning gunpowder smells great. Really wonderful. I may just associate it with lots of great memories, but it's certainly not repulsive, by any means, even to someone who's never smelled it before.
Of course. Always. When violence is necessary, it's only because all other avenues have failed, including running away. Especially running away. I have no problem with anyone thinking me a coward if that's the price I have to pay to avoid taking a life.
Wrong on all counts. Shooting someone means only that you intend to stop them from doing what they're doing at the moment. In fact, stopping them from doing what they're doing is so important that the outcome, whether they live or die, is considered of such relative unimportance that it's no impediment to pulling the trigger. "Intent to kill" is murder. When you shoot someone, you shouldn't care whether they die or not. You just want them to stop. Your training was wrong. The rule is "don't pull a gun unless killing someone is, in context, unimportant."
If you'd prefer, I'd be happy to modify that to "needs to be shot" or even "needs so badly to be stopped from what they're doing at the moment that the application of force, even deadly force, is wholly justified." But I think that, in cases like I cited where security officers were taking actions that directly resulted in the untimely deaths of innocents, it is not hyperbole to say they, at that moment, deserved to be shot. This does not (as I stated above) mean that I intend to judge them guilty of a capital crime and carry out the punishment. It just means that the need to stop them is so acute that it doesn't matter if they live or die.
Perhaps it would make you feel better if I pointed out that people, including the security guards in the cites I provided, "deserve to be shot" only at the moment they are committing their crimes. It's a temporary condition. But in that moment, no, I don't think "deserves to be shot" is hyperbole. It's reason. It may even be a moral and ethical imperative.
I guess that explains all the whitewash you're throwing around. Specifically:
That's the core of your post, a bleating and transparent lie that there really aren't security guards who deserve to be shot. You're wrong and you either know it or you're an idiot with his head stuck so far up his ass you'll never see daylight again (which is, actually, a reasonably good description of most rent-a-cops.)
How about a few cites?
Security Guards Who Use Their Job To Abuse Children
Security Guards Who Use Their Job To Rape and Profile
Security Guards Who Use Their Job To Murder
Security Guards Who Use Their Job To Falsely Imprison (and generally just act like assholes)
and there are a whole bunch more, but I don't intend to spend the whole morning cutting and pasting links. Just go google for "security guard abuse" and limit your reading to newspapers and academic articles and you can't escape the conclusion that some security guards are so "badge heavy" (the "I've got a badge so I'm God" complex) that they truly need to be shot. When you make articulate postings defending security guards and deny that unfortunate reality, you lose all credibility.
Wow. There are enough errors bound up in this that it would take the better part of my workday to untangle them. The basic problem with this conclusion is that it's not supported by the case you just presented.
Specifically, you said that the gun is a problem when you are "involved in some sort of altercation." Agreed. But all (statistically, not counting a couple of outliers that should not effect policy) people who legally carry concealed weapons don't get involved in altercations with the good guys. They both know better and they've been trained better.
In light of the cited case, your conclusion is utterly specious. That's the best I can say while assuming the most favorable (to you) definition of the word "altercation." If, however, you consider that your attitude is applicable to virtually all interaction with the public, then you're just an undertrained, paranoid idiot.
I've authored about 400 magazine articles in my life and I've never had an editor enforce an "overall length requirement" in any fashion except via word count. At minimum, please tell me that if I were one of your students, you'd express your "length requirement" via a word count so that I could at least compose in 14-point type on screen and then just resize the entire document once, at completion, to meet your formatting requirements.
If you actually tell your students to provide you "x pages at y font size" instead of giving them a word count requirement, you're teaching them bad habits. When I retire from my day job in a couple of years and take up writing full time, I won't be writing for any editor who sets length requirements by any method other than word count. Any organization that would hire an editor like that is an organization I wouldn't trust to pay my invoices.
I balk at the thought of a teacher who specifies the font size I should use. Pretty much all word processing software can count words. Tell me how many words you want and I'll make it that long. I'll also make it in the 14-point font that my aging eyes can actually read.
Please tell me you don't actually enforce a font-size requirement on assignments. Please.
It's not a matter of not trusting. It's a matter of responsibility and consequences. The responsibility for making things work falls on IT. No matter what input to the system causes it to fail, the consequences fall on ITs head. Controlling the inputs is the only way to make sure that if I suffer bad consequences, I am doing so justly.
That's not to say that some customers aren't different. In my organization, there are substantial legal penalties for screwing some things up, so we're very careful. Nevertheless, there are situations where autonomy is needed. Developers support themselves but when they need to do something radical, they aren't on the corp lan. Some people absolutely require complete freedom to do as they please for creative or investigative reasons. Those folks get a stand-alone workstation that's air-gapped from the rest of the organization.
As for other folks who want a tool to make their jobs easier, we have a service agreement with their big bosses. Exhaustive studies, constantly updated, have resulted in a continuing agreement detailing with great specificity exactly what tools are required to do the job. If a grunt feels differently, he's directly contradicting his own chain of command and there's a much bigger problem going on than an obstructionist IT staff. If he can get his bosses to approve, then we'll test and deploy the tool to everyone but nobody who shares their job title with 5000 other employees is so special that they need to install their own unique tools.
Good points. I've been using digital since .3 megapixel Sony Mavicas, recording on floppies, cost $750. That camera paid for itself inside a month via increased eBay sales. I think the most important thing is to use the right tool for the job.
Digital is great when the picture-delivery process profits from speed. Photojournalists and especially sports photogs figured that out years ago. Digital (portable iterations; I'm not talking about Leaf backs, here) is also great when ultimate quality isn't necessary and low continuing costs are an advantage. The low end, where most cameras are sold, certainly should go 99% digital since the customers there would be better served by that technology.
But film is great, too. I own a Nikon F5, another very expensive purchase that paid for itself immediately back when I was doing magazine work. I no longer do professional photography but that F5 is still my primary camera for all casual photography. You know what? Using it is one of those sublime experiences. Every time I fire a shot, I'm glad I bought the thing. It fits me. It fits the way I work. I produce some of my best output with it. When I need fast handling (something that's mind-bogglingly expensive, still, in the digital world) with very high quality (and 35mm film is still produces much higher quality output than nearly all 35mm-pattern digital cameras, the only exception being the, again, mind-bogglingly expensive ones) that F5 is perfect.
There's no reason for film to go away. It may be obsolete but that doesn't mean it's ineffective. It's like the Colt 1911. It was the finest fighting pistol ever invented. It remained inarguably so until the coming of the Glock in 1986. It's still wildly popular and still may be the best fighting pistol available, though there are now other valid contenders for that title. It will remain in use until well after phasers become common, just like film will continue survive long after the digital juggernaut has become ubiquitous.
Personally, I'm retiring from my day job in a couple of years. When I do, I'm going to get some 8x10 and 11x14 pinhole cameras and lots of big sheets of film. Them I'm going to start doing contact printing, first on silver then, later, on platinum. I have a feeling that for people like me, film will remain available for many decades to come.
Really? I don't agree. Having sat on a jury where the charge was aggravated sexual assault of a child, I can tell you that people get convicted of being child molestors for things that don't pass the smell test. Here's an example (just to grab a random example out of today's newspaper) of someone arrested where the actual language of the indictment includes "...She could tell by the way (the accused) was hugging her, he was feeling her breasts with his chest,..." Excuse me?
It takes only a few minutes googling to find kids under 18 convicted of producing child pornography because they taped themselves masturbating or having a bit of sport with a girl/boyfriend. In the state where I live, there's an active lobbying group trying to get the sex offender registry records expunged in cases where the perp and his victim were, respectively, some high school senior (18 years old) and his prom date (17 or less) who just happened to get caught. They've had some success and prosecutors can, in those cases, now choose to refrain from putting convicted people on the list but that sort of common sense is not yet mandatory.
So if it's wrong to say someone's gay when that is intended to inflame the listener and cause them to feel ill will toward the person being discussed, why is the "convicted child molestor" tag worse? Depending on the circumstances, both can be totally innocuous observations that, frankly, are better left unsaid because they don't communicate any information of real value.
Yes, it is complex. It is really, really complex. I don't think MS did the right thing. Far from it. But I do say that we need to be slow and deliberative, we need to think pretty damn hard, before we say "this is right and that is wrong." I was reared in a religious tradition that taught only God can know what is in someone's heart. I think that's true. I think when we judge the actions of others, we take serious risks. The questions are usually more complex than we can ever know.
from the cameras with one of these.
...the same rules apply now that applied 35 years ago when I started buying photo equipment. Most are places that will screw you one way or another. Some are downright crooks. And there are a few gems that stay in business year after year, garnering more and more loyal customers even though their prices aren't rock bottom.
Personally, I use BHPhotoVideo.com for darn near everything photographic. Some things, like flash brackets, are personal taste problems. You just gotta touch and feel before buying. But for everything else, B&H is either the best or so close I can't tell the difference. They're businesslike (even brusque, sometimes) on the phone but they're also professional and reliable. The number of similarly high-quality online dealers in this market segment can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Actually, you only need two - B&H and Adorama. There are a few specialty dealers who are good for other things and if you need what they sell, they're wonderful. But for the full line of general photo gear available online, it's B&H and Adorama.
The best guidance I know of for buying a camera or related equipment in the U.S. is at photo.net.
Right. That's why, back in the day when I was involved in things that required me to be at the courthouse a lot, it was common to see some well-dressed man standing on the courthouse steps, waiting. At an appointed hour, he'd pull some paper from a briefcase and start reading, very quickly and very quietly. Shortly thereafter, in a slightly louder voice, he'd say "No bidders other than the primary" (lienholder). Guess what? A foreclosed house just got sold at public auction for a ridiculously low price. If it used to be yours, you still owe virtually all the unpaid balance of the loan. The bank, however, will send in a fix-up crew, slap on a new coat of paint, spray-paint the lawn green, list the house with a realtor, and put a quick extra USD$30K in assets on their books.
No matter how much a particular realty market is skyrocketing, I've never heard of an owner getting their loan paid off and excess proceeds given back to them following a foreclosure. Yeah, it's possible, but I've never heard of it happening.
A crusty, yeasty bun, sliced just so, spread with homemade mayo, sprinkled with freshly ground black pepper, a perfectly done, just-past-rare home-ground hand-formed patty resting atop the mayo, juices mingling to create a perfect sauce, and a thick slice of decadent blue cheese melting over the meat - Yeah, that sounds like gastronomy to me.
The hamburger, by the way, was Julie Childs favorite food. A pretty strong endorsement, IMO.
I'll bet the guy just LOVES the first few installments each season of American Idol.
Could you provide a link, please? The first thing I thought when I heard this story was "Where was the trained crewman with the Barrett 50? Or even one of those semi-auto M2HBs you can get nowadays?" I always assumed that commercial ships at sea had a right to shoot back, with heavy weapons if they had them. Then again, maybe I just don't know how you define "heavy weapons." Obviously, I'd like to read up on this so any sources you can provide would be welcome.
Unfortunately, by the time I was old enough to begin having serious questions in this area, Alzheimers (or something similar; he was never formally diagnosed) had taken his mind. I know from my father that his father had been a traveling evangelist and had also owned a grocery store from which the majority of his living was derived. In his later productive years, he chose to close the store (and formally forgive a large amount of debt on the books that he had extended to poor families over the course of the Depression) and preach, basically, full-time. His faith was, perhaps, insufficient to sustain him during WW2, a time when he had 4 sons all simultaneously overseas in battle zones. Three were in Europe, two as grunts on the ground and one as a glider pilot for the Normandy invasion. (Later in life, I observed to that particular uncle that I never knew he was insane; he just smiled.) My dad spent most of his service in the Japanese-occupied Phillipines. The only communication my grandfather ever received were ridiculously redacted letters that reportedly threw him into fits of horrible depression. If the Army wouldn't let his sons talk to him, even in letters, what danger must they be in? That question drove him over the edge at times, perhaps even more than if he had known the truth that his sons were, indeed, in incredible danger much of the time. During those years, the removal of his sons also meant the removal of his support network, so he sank into abject poverty (as did the whole family) while living with a daughter in-law. The stress of the war years left him a shell of a man; nothing productive ever came from him again.
I have to think that he fulfilled a purpose with his life but I don't know what it was. I know he paid a terrible price. According to my father and some others who knew him, my grandfather possessed a depth of Biblical knowledge that, during his active preaching years, allowed him to counsel the troubled with an appropriate chapter, verse, and resultant distilled wisdom, all without hesitation. He reputedly could calm and comfort anyone, in any situation. Perhaps that was his gift. Perhaps that was why he studied so hard. I'll never know for sure.
Thanks for asking. It's been too long since I thought of the man.
It's amazing what dedication and religious fervor can get you. My grandfather was a hardshell Baptist evangelist in Mississippi and Alabama during The Depression. Yet because he was so devoted to his faith, he taught himself Greek and Hebrew so that he could read older (and presumably less corrupted) versions of the Bible. I always admired him for that. In context, I consider it an amazing achievement. I'm not sure how it profited him, but he certainly thought it was worth the effort.
Wow. That was, um, an excessively intense response to a simple suggestion that you look at things with a slightly broader perspective. Thanks for the exchange; I found it enlightening. I really did. It's always good to be reminded just how far people can go when they make up their minds about something.
Now I think it's time for a review. In my previous post, I said:
I think I'll stand pat on that. It pretty accurately sums up this conversation, one that is now concluded on my end.
It's interesting how you're able to mix the insightful with the oblivious. Most people can't do that. You've got your facts right, but your attitude renders you incapable of properly interpreting them. Since essentially anonymous postings on public message boards don't change anyones attitudes, I won't try. Let me just point out the basic contradiction you've presented.
You said that "diabetes is believed to develop when..." any of several insulin-related things go wrong. That's right and there's nothing in there about weight. Later, you say that you know people who got diabetes "as a direct result of 30-40 years of doing nothing but getting fat and lazy." That's not the same thing. So, which is it? Do people get diabetes because of an insulin problem or do they get it because they're fat and lazy?
Here's a hint - characterizing people as lazy and attributing (even in part) an endocrine disorder to that characteristic is, shall we say, counterproductive to the pursuit of effective treatment. Understand, though, that remaining factually correct and accounting for attitudes and lifestyle are not mutually exclusive. A better way to explain to a new or pre- diabetic would run along these lines: "Parts of your endocrine system aren't working right. It's not sufficient for you to eat and move just like normal, thin folks. If that's all you do, you'll get fat. You're going to have to work twice as hard as most people to stay thin and you simply must do so because if you don't, that endocrine problem will spiral ridiculously out of control and put you in a world of hurt. It's not fair, but you got dealt a bad hand. You're going to have to play it perfectly if you don't want to lose the game."
See the difference? Or are you going to persist in being like those asshole ex-smokers who insist on denying that nicotine is addictive just because they were able to kick the habit?
Congrats on your weight loss but that's not how it works. People get Type 2 because their bodies don't regulate blood glucose levels properly. If your body is going to fail at that, it's going to fail. Being terribly out of shape can cause the failure to be worse and sooner, but it's not the cause. In fact, there's a good deal of research that indicates that the process of becoming diabetic tends to make people fat, not the other way around. Lots of fat folks are fat because they're pre-diabetic; they're not pre-diabetic because they're fat. It's really a vicious cycle and it gets worse once the diabetes sets in. Some of the most commonly used medications for diabetes significantly change the metabolism and cause people to pack on the pounds. There's nothing quite as disheartening as going to the doctor and correctly reporting that you're eating less and exercising more yet gaining weight because of those damn pills.
My point is that it's wrong to blame people for their diabetes. "You let yourself get fat and now it's your fault that you're diabetic" is wrong on many levels. That being said, good habits can put off the BG-regulation failure by reducing stress on the mechanisms that are failing. If you can put off that failure until after you've died of something else, you can, in a way, say that you kept yourself from becoming diabetic. It's not really true, but it's a good, practical approach to the problem, especially if there's a huge family history of diabetes.
Thanks for the info. I'll look them up. However, the pistol I'm seeking isn't the DES69 or any of their mainstream products. It's the centerfire singleshot they made only a few of for 200 meter pistol silhouette shooting. Someday I hope to find one.
I blame them. I'm in Texas where there's no state paperwork. A 4472 is required, just like anything that goes through a dealer. It's easy to find a dealer who'll handle a 4472 transfer for a $25 flat fee. The only additional paperwork required is filing just one single form that describes the gun. Approval comes back and the shipment is made. The reason it's so simple is that, legally, the dealer is not doing the importation. I am. The dealer is only there to accept the shipment and do the transfer form.
Most FFL holders do not understand this. They think that *they* are the importer of the firearm for resale. In that case, there is a mountain of paperwork, guns may have to be re-marked with new import stamps in the metal, etc. For a dealer to import a gun for resale is a big deal. But for a dealer to facilitate importation by a private individual of a gun not intended for resale is a no-brainer. You just have to keep looking until you find a dealer who will believe you when you explain the process to them.
For extra bonus points, can anyone tell me who is statutorily exempted from these requirements and may import any firearm, including machine guns, by simply tossing said gun in their baggage when returning from abroad, declaring it at customs and showing their ID? It's not the President or anyone in the Executive Branch. Any ideas?
The answer is: flag officers in the U.S. military. I've often wondered how frequently they take advantage of that little perk. For "normal" guns, there's probably no way to tell. For machine guns, though, they'd create a problem for their heirs. Upon their death, literally no one would have a legal right to inherit the gun. It would have to be surrendered to the BATFE.
Used guns. A few years ago, the relative strength of our dollars made it possible to get a SIG P240 in .38 Special from Australia for about 850 Australian dollars. IIRC, that was about 500 American. At the time, the same gun in the U.S., if you could find one, would have easily topped a thousand dollars. Same story on a Hammerli 120, which is rare and pricy in the U.S. Those were my two failures.
To be fair, though, the ATF-related problems were serious, too. Theoretically, it's not that difficult, but the ATF has been such a pain in the ass to so many gun dealers over the years that those dealers are terribly gun-shy. (I say, that's a joke, son.) They aren't willing to do any out-of-the-ordinary paperwork and draw attention to themselves. The only one I found who would do the job (and I limited the search to my state since a concurrent state-to-state transfer adds exponentially to the complications) quoted a minimum of $350 to start the paperwork and wanted me to sign a contract saying that once they had the gun in hand they could sell it to me at any price they wanted, nevermind that I would have already paid the foreign dealer directly. No thanks. FFLs are limited forms of government-granted monopoly and come with all the problems that implies.
Slightly offtopic - If anyone has a production-class silhouette pistol made by Unique, any chambering, anywhere in the world, at anything approaching a reasonable price, then I'm buying. (French readers, I'm talking to you.) Please post back here.
I just wish it were easier to get guns out of Australia. I've attempted to import pistols from Australia to the U.S. twice in the past and failed both times because there was just too much red tape, too many levels of approvals, and time frames were just ridiculously long. With the way the Australian government seems to want to cut down on the number of guns, you'd think they'd work really hard to make it easy to ship them out of the country. But noooo.
Were your results anything like this?