Month: December 2013

St. Louis is Now Waging War Against the Homeless

In another chapter of the state’s war against the homeless we have officials working for the city of St. Louis shutting down a church event that provided meals to the homeless:

ST. LOUIS • Churches on the Streets may have served its last hot supper. At least for now.

The city Health Department on Monday told organizers of the group that serves food to the homeless Monday nights at a vacant train depot near the St. Louis riverfront that they must stop serving hot food because they don’t have a permit.

The city’s edict came a day after the group was featured on the front page of the Post-Dispatch. The group has been providing home-cooked meals, clothing and supplies to the homeless for more than a year. Before each meal, Edward “Pastor Paul” Gonnella, a recovered crack addict and ex-convict, delivers short sermons to the homeless in hopes getting them off the streets.

Organizers thought they didn’t need a permit to serve food because they have been meeting at the old Cotton Belt Rail Depot, which is private property.

Not so, says Pat Mahoney, an environmental health supervisor with the city Health Department. She said the group must have a permit to serve hot food to the public even though its volunteers are doing it on private property. She said the group is allowed to distribute pre-packaged meals.

But the real icing on the cake is this paragraph:

Mahoney said the city considers the group’s activities different from other outdoor gatherings, such as a tailgate party before Rams football games, because those are more private in nature and aren’t inviting the public. Churches that host fish frys also must have permits.

You can server hot meals if it relates to a football game without city permission but you can’t server hot meals to people who have nothing unless you get permission from the city. Once again we see the American attitude that the oligarchs, in this case the owners and operators of football stadiums, received special treatment while those with nothing get shafted precisely because they have nothing.

If the organizers apply for a permit I’m sure the city will either deny it or charge enough that the churches can’t reasonably afford it. This isn’t just about paying to play, it’s about the way cities deal with the homeless. City governments about interested in providing assistence to the homeless, they’re only interested in making the lives of the homeless so miserable that they move somewhere else and become somebody else’s problem.

On the Colorado School Shooting

I’m not going to spend much time discussing the recent school shooting in Colorado since most of the facts aren’t in yet. But I do want to quickly mention one important aspect: the extent of time the shooting lasted:

In less than 80 seconds, Karl Pierson “fired one random shot down a hallway,” then entered an area where 17-year-old Claire Esther Davis was seated with a friend, “and shot the female victim point-blank” in the head. “There was no time for the victim to run from the shooter,” Robinson told reporters on Saturday.

Pierson then fired another round down a hallway, then entered the library, where he fired again and ignited one of the Molotov cocktails, according to Robinson.

That ignited at least three bookshelves, causing smoke to pour into the library.

He then fired a fifth round and ran to the library’s back corner, “and there took his own life.”

By 12:35 p.m., it was all over.

[…]

The rampage might have resulted in many more casualties had it not been for the quick response of a deputy sheriff who was working as a school resource officer at the school, Robinson said.

This event shows that a lot of damage can be caused in a mere 80 seconds. It also shows that having the ability to respond quickly to school shootings is critical. In most of these shootings the shooter has committed suicide upon meeting armed resistance. That means having armed individuals on site is an effective way to reduce the amount of damage cased by a shooter. I’m not a fan of having uniformed officers on site because it both creates an obvious point of failure and reinforces the prison-like environment that schools already reflect. I would far prefer schools allow teachers and faculty to carry a firearm is they so chose. That would add uncertainty to any plan to shoot up a school and would remove an obvious point of failure.

There will never be a perfect solution to prevent violence but we can work to mitigate its effects. One of the most effective ways of doing so is to have a more widely armed populace.

This Blog Interrupted by Updated Development Software

Last night the developers at Pebble released beta 3 of their 2.0 software development kit (SDK). This release fixed a rather nasty bug that was preventing me from continuing development on WristCoin.

The bug was related to how the phone app communicated Bitcoin pricing information to the Pebble. When the watch app is first opened it asks the phone app to fetch Bitcoin prices from the various exchanges. This operation is done asynchronously on the phone and data is returned for each exchange as it comes it. The bug I ran into was that the first message form the phone app to the Pebble worked fine but all subsequent messages failed. That means that the pricing information for the first exchange would be communicated to the Pebble but none of the others. While I could have rewritten the app to wait for all exchanges to report in before sending the data to the Pebble I found that solution inelegant and chose to wait for an update to correct the bug. Since the latest release fixes that bug I have continued development on WristCoin instead of writing additional blog posts.

Poll Reveals 60 Percent of Americans Want Unicorns

Reason did a poll asking Americans whether or not they should be allowed to manufacture firearms on 3D printers:

3D printers can create a variety of items from plastic, including working guns. However, the new Reason-Rupe poll finds six in 10 Americans say Americans should not be allowed to print 3D guns. Thirty percent of Americans believe people should be allowed to print 3D guns at home.

Majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents agree that printing 3D guns should be prohibited. However, Democrats are more unified in their opposition with 67 percent who favor prohibiting 3D printed guns compared to 52 percent of non-partisan independents and 55 percent of Republicans. Twenty-five percent of Democrats and a third of non-partisan independents and Republicans think people should be allowed to print their own functioning 3D guns.

One cannot stop the march of advancing technology, which renders the opinions of those 60 percent irrelevant. The beauty of 3D printers is that they are devices that can be kept entirely within a home. There is no need for a separate shop that could raise the suspicion of local law enforcement. That makes enforce any laws that prohibit manufacturing a good on a 3D printer impossible to enforce. By favoring laws against manufacturing firearms on 3D printers the respondents might as well have asked for unicorns.

I’m a strong advocate of 3D printers because they enable individuals to manufacture goods from easily copied rendering files. Just as the Internet rendered censorship irrelevant 3D printers will render regulations against physical objects irrelevant.

They Hate Us for Our Freedom

Remember the propaganda released shortly after 9/11? We were told that the terrorists attacked us because they hated us for our freedom. It was such bullshit that I was surprised that so many people lapped it up. But they didn’t hate us for our freedoms then and they don’t hate us for our freedoms now. They hate us because of shit like this:

(Reuters) – Fifteen people on their way to a wedding in Yemen were killed in an air strike after their party was mistaken for an al Qaeda convoy, local security officials said on Thursday.

The officials did not identify the plane in the strike in central al-Bayda province, but tribal and local media sources said that it was a drone.

“An air strike missed its target and hit a wedding car convoy, ten people were killed immediately and another five who were injured died after being admitted to the hospital,” one security official said.

Five more people were injured, the officials said.

European countries and the United States have been fucking over the Middle East for over a ages. It’s pretty easy for anybody with a pair of eyes and a few neurons to see why so many people in the Middle East hate the United States. Bombing operations like this will only make the situation worse.

Carrying a Firearms is Apparently a Gateway Crime

Remember when your teachers tried to scare you away from cannabis by claiming it was the gateway drug? Supposedly smoking cannabis would lead to your also snorting cocaine, dropping acid, and injecting heroine. Following that line of thinking Garry McCarthy, the Chicago police superintendent, had something to say about those of us who carry a firearm:

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says that’s more than any major city and he says if you can reduce weapons you will reduce crime.

“Carrying a loaded firearm is the gateway crime to committing a murder,” McCarthy said.

If that’s the case then receiving a badge must be a gateway crime as well because it seems that the Chicago Police Department has a rather interesting history of criminal behavior [PDF].

In all seriousness I do understand McCarthy’s attitude. Police officers often seem to have a desire to commit murder and other violent crimes. Were I surrounded by police officers every day, especially Chicago police officers, I would probably hypothesize that carrying a gun is what drives their desire to commit violent acts. But when you’re not involving in the police machinery the picture looks quite different. Most non-state agents who carry firearms are quite peaceful.

Jennifer Zilavy is an Asshole

I don’t know Jennifer Zilavy personally but I already know that she’s an asshole. Who is she? She’s the city attorney for Madison, Wisconsin. Why is she an asshole? Because of her attitude towards men:

“There’s no way that (sexual assault) will not happen,” assistant city attorney Jennifer Zilavy said. “No offense to men, but I don’t know any man who wants to just snuggle.”

The attitude that either gender is a slave to its emotions irritates me. Both men and women are capable of controlling their behavior. Men can choose not to commit sexual assault just as women can choose not to cower in fear when confronted with violence. I would go so far as to say controlling one’s behavior is a prerequisite for being considered and adult.

If people want to pay money for cuddling they should be allowed to. A vast majority of men aren’t prowling the streets in the hopes of finding a woman to rape. Any business that operates on the concept of selling a cuddling buddy for an hour isn’t going to standby if one of its employees starts getting out of hand. The fear mongering being drummed up by Zilavy is both sexist and fictitious.

An Accurate Interpreter

I guess nobody expected deaf people to watch Nelson Mandela’s funeral because the sign language interpreter didn’t know sign language:

JOHANNESBURG — The sign-language interpreter on stage at Nelson Mandela’s globally broadcast memorial service was a faker who was just waving his arms around meaninglessly, advocates for the deaf said Wednesday.

The unidentified man seen around the world on television next to leaders including United States President Barack Obama “was moving his hands around but there was no meaning in what he used his hands for,” Bruno Druchen, the federation’s national director, told The Associated Press.

While that is embarrassing I’m having a difficult time finding where the outrage is coming from. Mandela’s funeral consisted of a good number of world “leaders” taking the stage and bullshitting us. They help up Mandela as an advocate of peace, a noble trait, while they planned more bombings, torture, and other egregious violations of human decency. Their words were empty and the interpreter reflected that perfectly.

How the State Prevents Progress

Amazon’s announcement that it was experimenting with delivery drones to get packages to customers quickly generated a lot of excitement. Fast package delivery is obviously something people want but, unfortunately, is something people can’t have. Why? For the same reason we can’t enjoy most technological advancements: the state. As it turns out Amazon couldn’t even test its drones in the United States because of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) restrictions:

When Jeffrey P. Bezos revealed to CBS’s Charlie Rose that Amazon.com was planning for a fleet of whirring octocopters to deliver everyone’s next iPhone case, the video that went along with it showed a prototype drone rising lazily off the ground and floating across green, open fields to reach its destination. It could’ve been anywhere — sunny California, maybe, or somewhere near Seattle. But it was actually neither of those places. Turns out it wasn’t even in the United States.

Spokespeople for Amazon and the Federal Aviation Administration have confirmed that the company chose an international location for its concept video after FAA restrictions prevented them from shooting here. Exactly which lucky country got a cameo is still a mystery; neither official would talk specifics.

This kind of problem occurs more often than you might think. The United States is technologically behind in many areas including manufacturing, medical technology, and automotive technology. We linger behind other countries because many of the technologies are either illegal here or the costs of getting them approved to sell here are too high. But don’t despair, all hope is not lost. I’m sure if Amazon hands enough bundles of cash over to the right politicians and bureaucrats the FAA will be convinced to reconsider the current regulations. This is America, if you want to play you have to pay.