Archive for the 'Humor' Category

No, I’m not kidding.

More than half of the people who were perpetrators or victims of gun violence in Milwaukee in recent years had elevated blood lead levels as children, according to a study released Friday by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The study of nearly 90,000 residents, conducted at the University’s Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health, suggests a link between early childhood lead exposure and gun violence in later years.

Lindsay R. Emer, the study’s lead author, said it was conducted using public health, education and criminal justice data.

After reviewing the records of 89,129 people who were born in Milwaukee between June 1, 1986, and Dec. 31, 2003, and given blood lead tests before the age of 6, Emer and other researchers found a correlation between elevated blood lead levels and the risk of being involved in gun violence.

Emer said that while the study was not able to definitively prove cause and effect, the link is striking:

According to their findings, 56% of the shooters and 51% of the victims were found to have blood lead levels equal to or greater than the recommended limit of lead exposure of 5 micrograms per deciliter.

The study originated from a dissertation Emer started she while still a doctoral student at UWM.

Since then, she has earned and defended her Ph.D., worked with the Medical College of Wisconsin and is currently a senior research consultant at the National Center for State Court.

The publication of her study, “Association of childhood blood lead levels with firearm violence perpetration and victimization in Milwaukee,” is a culmination of years of work.

Then there’s that whole issue of connecting correlation with causation.  But why nits?  Just accept it, yes?  After all, it showing what the authors call a “striking link.”  And, best of all, it answers that age old American question “Why do inner city folk engage in violence against each other?”

Some of the comments show what people tend to think about crap like this.

She wasted her time in college.  But of course, that’s what a lot of people do with college when they get caught up with social justice issues.  That and throw their money away.  It’s a bit surprising that the university faculty would approve this dissertation.  How embarrassing for them.

Then of course there is this.

National Post:

The games children play in schoolyards are famously horrible, if you stop and think about them.

Tag, for example, singles out one poor participant, often the slowest child, as the dehumanized “It,” who runs vainly in pursuit of the quicker ones. Capture the Flag is nakedly militaristic. British Bulldog has obvious jingoistic colonial themes. Red Ass, known in America as Butts Up, involves deliberate imposition of corporal punishment on losers.

But none rouse the passions of reform-minded educational progressives quite like dodgeball, the team sport in which players throw balls at each other, trying to hit their competitors and banish them to the sidelines of shame.

When the Canadian Society for the Study of Education meets in Vancouver at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, a trio of education theorists will argue that dodgeball is not only problematic, in the modern sense of displaying hierarchies of privilege based on athletic skill, but that it is outright “miseducative.”

I never played dodgeball in gym class.  We played only in boy’s gym class, and the coach made the sides get so close to each other that when we threw the ball at each other, it left whelps when it hit.  We played inside a gym, not outside where it could legitimately be called dodgeball.  We were danger-close.  He called it “murderball,” and we obliged him.

I guess these Canadian theorists wouldn’t like that, huh?  Hey, I was wondering, for men who are headed off to the US Marine Corps to learn to defend the country and who are learning to be men when they are boys, and who must survive in the brutality of combat, will those Canadian “theorists” be there to help the sides hold hands and sing Kumbaya?

I noticed that to this post and this one, tfA-t made some remarks.  I sent a note to his posted email address, which of course bounced.  So I have no way to communicate with him.  I don’t concur that he has a “right” to make comments except on his own blog (which probably doesn’t exist).  The First Amendment says no such thing about a right to post comments.  But the note I sent says this.

I want to moderate your comments, I really do.  But I’m having sort of a problem.  I need to know more.

You see, I have no respect for “Gray man.”  I use my real name, I told my readers where I used to work, and I own every post I’ve ever made.  They’re mine, they represent my views, and those views can be connected to a name.  My own.

Now, I’m sure that your real name isn’t tfA-t.  No momma actually names their baby that unless she hates him.  Maybe your momma hates you – I don’t know.

So I need some information from you, and if you give it to me, I’ll moderate your comments, giving you full access after the first one so that you an trash my web site until your heart is content.

[1] Real name

[2] Place of employment

[3] DD214 form (since you claimed to be former military).

I need all of this in a verifiable system, which means that you copy your response to this email to your work email, and then forward the same note from your work email to this address.  Please send me the URL associated with your place of employment so that I can verify you are who you say you are.

Otherwise, you’re just another boy sitting in her momma’s basement.

So are you bold and proud, or are you afraid and cowardly?  Which is it?  Send this information to me and get on board trashing my web site.  Do it.  Just do it.

So let’s get this party rolling, tfA-t.  I can be reached.  You know how to do it.

Elizabeth MacBride:

Shaggy beards are to South Carolina gun shops what man-buns are to Vermont coffee shops. And both places are modern-day town squares, but in different Americas.

[ … ]

As an aside, enjoying the shock value of his statement, he tells me that it’s legal to buy and sell small tanks in South Carolina, too.

Shades of Fort Sumter, I think. If it’s man-buns versus shaggy beards, does the side with the WWI-era tanks win?

I’m not sure what she’s insinuating from the way that question was posed, but she may be too clever by half.

Listen, Ms. MacBride.  The little boys with man-buns don’t want anything to do with those boys with shaggy beards down in South Carolina.

They hunt feral hogs with long knives by jumping on their backs and stabbing them in the gut.  They stay out all night ‘Coon hunting, only to go to work the next day after they’ve had to chase their dogs down.  They can put a 30-06 round on a dime at 100 yards.  They drink corn liquor from a fruit jar, grow their own vegetables, and the man-buns wouldn’t last two seconds with them.

If you know any man-buns thinking of coming down this way, tell them to go buy a frapa-mocha-super-duper-grande and chill for a couple of minutes until they get some sense.

Via Fred Tippens.

Well, whatever.  Don’t expect me to adopt such a beast, and I hope they don’t decide to have a child.

Concerning David Codrea, he is apparently a second amendment extremist.

One example is an essay recently posted on the website of the far-right Oath Keepers militia by Second Amendment extremist David Codrea.

Hey, what exactly do I have to do to catch a break here?  I want some prog to call me something like a “far-right gun nut second amendment extremist wild man,” or some such thing.

I’ll have to leave it to readers.  I wish I could have a contest to see who could create the best caricature of me, the winner claiming prizes of guns and ammo.  I could post it as the comment of the week.  Alas, I have nothing to give away.

Scientific American:

Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University.

So, who is buying all these guns—and why?

The short, broad-brush answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.

These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes.

Ooo … a “definitive study!”  That makes it sound oh so scientific and all.  Seriously, do these pinheads think people are going to be honest with them or anyone else on whether they have guns and how many they have?  Really?

And did they think to ascribe this alleged result to the notion that the second amendment is there for amelioration of tyranny rather than wanting to be John Wayne?  God, these people must live in a movie.

Funny, this.  I would have thought Scientific American would focus on STEM, like calculus, trajectory, failure modes and effects, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and Monte Carlo analysis.  Does anyone at Scientific American still know how to do calculus?  Can anyone there solve an integral equation?

Nope, they want to cite definitive studies done at … [ahem] … Harvard.  They want to study white men, or maybe white male privilege, or maybe male patriarchy, or male confusion, or something.

My how things have devolved with time.  I’m not a Darwinist and don’t believe in macro-evolution, but if I was, I’d be hard pressed to explain things like this.

NBC Connecticut:

A 49-year-old Connecticut man has been charged with threatening after his wife told police he stabbed and carved a watermelon in a passive-aggressive manner.

Thomaston Police Chief Jim Campbell said Carmine Cervellino’s wife originally went to police on July 4 to report finding marijuana and drugs in a toolbox at the house. The toolbox was not there when police responded and no charges were filed.

When the woman later returned home, she found a watermelon on the counter with a butcher’s knife in it, police said.

She told police that Cervellino came in soon after and carved the watermelon in a passive-aggressive manner, Campbell said.

The Register Citizen of Torrington, which originally reported the story, said the woman took a photo of the toolbox and the knife and showed them to police.

 

Cervellino was arrested on July 12 and charged with threatening and disorderly conduct, according to online court records.

Because, you know, there are all those laws protecting watermelons.  Family problems, you say?  I don’t know, but there’s only one answer for this situation.  Arrest Jerry Miculek immediately!

Jesse Jackson:

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Hear that? It’s the sound of an assault weapon in the hands of a rogue individual, taking down an airplane flying overhead.

At least, that’s what the Reverend Jesse Jackson thinks assault weapons can do. The Reverend’s misinformed assertion that assault weapons are capable of shooting down airplanes came during a Fox News appearance yesterday.

“These semi-automatic weapons, these assault weapons, can only kill people, and in fact, they are threats to national security … the young man who did the killing in Aurora, Colorado … he could shoot down airplanes, so this is a matter of homeland security as well,” he said while speaking about gun control with anchor Martha MacCallum on ‘America’s Newsroom.’

How about a different challenge.  If anyone takes 800 meter shots trying to knock off that clown nose you’re wearing, instead of 5.56 mm ammunition with an AR (because we aren’t Travis Haley), it’ll be the boys with scoped .27 or .308 bolt action rifles.

What a parasitic moron.