Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

Gratitude

I post a lot of stories about police officers acting like total dicks but once in a while the tables are turned and it’s the police officer who is in the right and the average person who is acting like a total dick:

he was grabbed by a desperate parolee and who held her with a knife to her throat in Woodbridge Center Mall until a police officer shot and killed the man.

Good on that police officer, he likely saved the woman’s life. Obviously she’s grateful for the police officer’s actions… or not:

Now the woman, Ellen Shane, 62, of Carteret, plans to sue the township for $5 million, claiming it failed to protect public safety and that she was injured as a result of the officer’s acts.

Both Shane and her husband, Ronald Shane, “are suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome and both have been dramatized from this incident,” according to the tort claim notice filed by their lawyer, David Corrigan of Eatontown.

What an ungrateful little prat. A random goon puts a knife to her neck, the police officer shoots the knife wielding asshole, and now that woman is suing the city because she suffered “post traumatic stress?” Would she have been happier if her throat had been slit? Post traumatic stress syndrome sucks but being dead sucks a whole lot more. You also have to love this:

Court papers filed with the township state Garcia told the officer he would harm Ellen Shane if not allowed to leave.

“Instead of attempting to resolve the situation, Barrett took out his gun and shot the suspect while he was holding Mrs. Shane,” the paper states.

Actually, I’d say the officer resolved the situation rather effectively.

Statism and Self-Projection

Read the following excerpt from this article and tell me what you see:

Age is just a number… except when it comes to marriage.

Let’s look at my stats:
Current age – 29
Divorced for – 8 months
Separated for – 1 year, 9 months
Age when I met my ex – 19
Age when I married – 24

Which brings me to my point: couples should not be allowed to get married before age 25.

While I know that this statement is going to make me very unpopular with readers, I do believe that it would be for the best — better both for the institution of marriage and the individuals getting married — if we could change the law to prevent couples from getting married before the age of 25.

OK, you can’t really tell me what you see so I’ll tell you what I see. I see a woman who is projection herself onto all other people and this projection is leading her to demand legislation. Statists seem to think because something happened to them it will happen to everybody. Gun control zealots sometime talk about what a situation would have been like if they had had a gun. Instead of ending peacefully the gun control zealot will talk about the death that would have occurred, and because they projection their violent tendencies onto everybody else they demand everybody be disarmed.

This is why I believe statism is synonymous with arrogance. When you say there ought to be a law because of an experience you had in life you’re making the arrogant statement that everybody else is just like you. Because the author of the above excerpt ended up divorced after marrying a man when she was 24 she believes everybody who marries before or at the age of 24 will end up getting divorced. This belief also requires her to believe that the cause of her divorce was the fact she was still “developing” as a person and such “development” completes at exactly 25 years of age, for everybody. This is incredibly arrogant. I know people who were fully “developed” much earlier than their 25th birthday and I know people who are much older than 25 and still “developing.” Humans don’t conform to specific cutoffs. Some children hit puberty at an early age while others hit is later. Some adults are capable of living independently when they turn 18 while others aren’t capable of such feats at any point in their lives. There are 16 year-olds I trust implicitly with firearms while there are 30 year-olds I won’t go to the range with. Everybody is different.

Differences in individuals is what individualists recognize. If I were married at age 24 and got divorced at age 26 I wouldn’t assume everybody else who married at age 25 would experience the same outcome. Projection ourselves onto others is a basic human action, one that I try to avoid (although I’m not always successful). Every time somebody argues for a law based on their personal experience they’re projecting. We need to divorce ourselves from demanding laws based on personal experience. Just because you did something doesn’t mean everybody else will do it.

Some People Don’t Want to See the Truth

You know the “Rand Paul is actually a secret libertarian who knows how to manipulate the Republican better than his father” group? Some of them are still lying to themselves:

Time to tell which Paul supporters are intelligent enough to read between the lines and which will allow their knee-jerk reaction be to abandon Rand Paul and call him a traitor to the cause of liberty.

So, tonight Rand Paul endorsed Romney for president. I think it was a good move on Rand’s part seeing as party loyalty runs deep for the sheeple of our country. Deep down, however, I’m sure he knows it will garner exactly zero votes for Romney from the Liberty movement… in fact, with that in mind, I see no danger in the move at all.

After Romney loses in a landslide to Obama, Rand can run in 2016 without being blamed for contributing to the margin that caused Republicans to lose in 2012. I’m sure the faint of heart will abandon Rand, will cry foul play, will call him names, but that’s ok. So far, he’s given me no real reason to mistrust him. Besides, it’s not like he says he agrees with his philosophy (as if he Romney has one) – just that they have similar family values and agree on like 4 policies (none of which Romney will actually do anything about).

I’m sorry that I’m the one who must tell you this but… you’re in an abusive relationship.

I know you believe politics truly loves you. After all it offers you liberty, freedom, and all the other sweet things a lover has to offer. Unfortunately when you’re not around politics is cheating on you with tyranny. It’s offer of this entire Rand Paul announcement being nothing by a clever ploy to lower Romney’s guard is enticing, and I know you want to believe it but… it just isn’t true. Politics is just lying to you again in order to stop you from leaving. Please, for your own sake, leave politics. Until you do the cycle of abuse will continue and you’ll find yourself constantly hurt.

Can Magical Computers Solve Crimes Before They Happen

That should be the title of this headline:

At around 3:45 a.m. on March 24, someone in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., used a mobile phone to Google “chemicals to passout a person.” Then the person searched Ask.com for “making people faint.” Then Google again, for “ways to kill people in their sleep,” “how to suffocate someone,” and “how to poison someone.”

The phone belonged to 23-year-old Nicole Okrzesik. Later that morning, police allege, she and her boyfriend strangled 19-year-old Juliana Mensch as she slept on the floor of their apartment. The Google searches, along with incriminating text messages between Okrzesik and her boyfriend, came to light as authorities investigated Mensch’s death. But what if they could have been alerted to the suspicious-sounding searches immediately? Could they have rushed to the apartment and saved the girl’s life?

Can you guess where this is going? Yup, Slate is hypothesizing the use of search data to effectively go pre-crime on peoples’ asses:

Web search data, by contrast, contains information about specific individuals’ thoughts and plans. In theory, Google or Ask.com could have flagged Okrzesik’s search queries as suspicious and sent the cops her device’s IP address. In the Hollywood script, a vigilant officer would notice the alert, rush to the scene, and knock on the door just as Mensch’s assailants were about to do her in.

In reality, there are a few obstacles that scenario. For starters, police would need instant access to the search data and a way to connect it to a physical address. These days they usually get electronic records only after a crime has been committed and they’ve built up enough evidence to obtain a warrant. They use the data not to prevent crime but to build their case for arrest and conviction.

There is also another obstacle to Slate’s scenario, people search for shit they have no intention of doing all the time. While I’ve never smoked marijuana before yet I often search of marijuana related topics for blog posts, historical information, and genuine curiosity. I’ve searched for terms like “can X kill somebody” where X is a random chemical because I’m simply curious. If somebody went through my search history they would probably think I’m quite the suspicious individual. I’m sure the search string “how long can a person survive without oxygen” would raise a few red flags in a law enforcement database (for those of you who are curious the answer appears to be somewhere between three to five minutes).

Yet the next three Google searches on Okrzesik’s phone—“ways to kill people in their sleep,” “how to suffocate someone,” and “how to poison someone”—seem to clearly indicate that someone has a strong curiosity about how to kill someone. One can also imagine other searches—say, a series of queries about the ingredients used to make anthrax—that law enforcement agents might like to know about.

Yeah, because law enforcement’s time should be wasted looking into a kid who was just wondering what antrax is and how it’s made.

Computers aren’t magic, they can’t predict crime. Using search terms to predict crime is absurd. People search for strings that appear criminal in nature all the time. Sometimes the people are looking for a recent story related to a crime, sometimes they’re interested in case histories surrounding such crimes, and sometimes they’re just curious if such a crime could be perpetrated.

It’s unfortunate that people who don’t understand computers have bestowed these wonderful electronic devices with mythical powers. Articles like this remind me of those yahoos who think the Venus Project is a good idea. If you’re not familiar with the Venus Project count your blessings, it’s an idiotic idea to centrally control economics with a super computer in order to bring forth utopia. How we’re suppose to build a computer that can control an entire economy when we can’t even build one that can accurately predict the stock market still remains unanswered.

Computers, like any other tool, is very good at performing the task they were build for. If you need to crunch numbers a computer is the right tool for the job. If you need to predict human behavior computers are all but entirely worthless. In order to build a computer that can do something we must first know how to do it. Since we can’t predict human behavior there is no way we can build a computer to do it. These people who talk seriously about using computers to solve crimes before they happy are living in a fantasy land made possible by a complete ignorance of computer technology.

Unfortunately other people who are ignorant of computer technology will latch onto this and think it’s a good idea. Thus this idiocy will continue to perpetuate.

Benefits by Force

A little chart produced by Think Progress has been making a second set of rounds on my social media feeds so I thought I’d address it. The charge describes the number of weeks of paid maternity leave several countries mandate by state decree (click to embiggen):

To many of my friends this chart demonstrates the horrible working conditions modern women in the United States are subjected to. Why, Canada gives women 50 weeks of paid maternity leave! They don’t seem to consider the fact that this paid maternity leave is only provided at the point of a gun. In order to provide such a benefit either the state must pay the women on maternity leave or the employer. If the state does it then it can only be done through theft, and if a business is forced to do it then it can only be done through the threat of violence.

People who are demanding the United States provide paid maternity leave should stop asking for it and start taking it. Do you want paid maternity leave? Is your employer unwilling to take it? Are you petitioning the state to provide it? Why not cut ou the middle man? Walk over to your neighbors’ homes, put a gun to their heads, and take what money you feel you’re owed. That’s what you’re demanding the state do for you after all.

This is the thing that irks me about the progressive movement. They aren’t trying to get social changes through voluntary cooperation, they’re trying to get it through force. Instead of advocating companies provide paid maternity leave or setting up mutual aid societies to help women on maternity leave they’re asking the state to use its gun to force the issue.

People want fre shit. If getting that free shit means forcefully taking it from others so be it, so long as somebody else performs the theft. It’s no different than the gun control advocates who demand the police rush to their house and kill the intruder; they’re against violence unless it’s done by proxy.

Before some member of the progressive movement accuses me of being misogynistic, waging a war on women, or simply being an asshole let me clarify this: I’m not against people voluntarily creating a mechanism to help people with newborn children. I would love to see a mutual aid society that focuses on helping families with newborns, in fact I would love to be a member of such a society because I know those services will likely be important to me when I decide to have children. You will get no argument from me if an employer decides to voluntarily offer paid maternity leave. If neighbors want to band together to help new mothers I’m all for it. I encourage helping one another but I can’t, in good conscious, support the initiation of violence.

I Think Obama is Officially Insane

It finally happened, I think Obama has finally falled off the deep end. Perhaps all the power of the presidency has driven him mad, perhaps he was mentally disturbed before every running for office, who knows? Either way the words coming out of his mouth aren’t making any sense:

Republicans “have gone from a preference for market-based solutions to an absolutism… [to] a belief that all regulations are bad; that government has no role to play,” said Obama…

As an individual who actually believes the government has no role to play, I must call bullshit on this. Republicans, in general, are just as statist as the Democrats. The Republicans claim they support “deregulation” and “free markets” but what they really support is cronyism and tightly controlled markets, same as the Democrats (granted, the Democrats are actually honest about their intentions to control markets). While the Democrats believe the government should provide welfare, subsidized contraceptives, healthcare, education, and protection the Republicans believe the government should provide welfare, make the use of contraceptives illegal, healthcare, education, and protection. Neither party believes the government has no role to play, that belief lies with those of us who dare oppose the state in its entirety.

The president’s divisive strategy is designed to persuade swing-voters that the former governor of Massachusetts is a radical libertarian…

Good luck with that, tell us how it turns out for you.

Considering the evidence at hand it seems wise to have Obama committed to psychiatric care before he does something really crazy like launch a nuclear weapon at China.

No Options this Election

There is no option this election, it’s either Obama or Other Obama:

Mitt Romney has won the Republican presidential primary in Texas and the remaining delegates needed to secure the party’s nomination.

With 1,086 delegates, Mr Romney only needed 58 to pass the 1,144 mark for the nomination. Texas awards 152 delegates proportionally.

There was never much of a question in who the nominee was going to be. If suckers members of the Republican Party didn’t vote enough delegates to get Romney the nomination the Republican National Convention (RNC) and local state parties were just going to rig the game to remove the Paul supporters anyways. I do hope this nomination process has been educational though, it demonstrated the fact that the people don’t have a voice in the Republican Party. When the higher ups said the nomination was going to go to Romney the deal was sealed.

Selfishly I must admit this news isn’t entirely bad in my opinion, it allows me to entirely remove myself from participating in politics. I can sit comfortably from the side lines and watch this country self-destruct because of the very political process people use to demonstrate how great this country is.

For those of you who are going to support Romney have fun. I know the hole you’re digging seems innocuous and you believe you won’t be forced to dig it as quickly under Romney. What you’re not seeing is the end game, that hole you’re digging is your grave, once it’s dug Romney is going to line you up in front of it and gun you down just as Obama will. You can still choose to throw down your shovels, climb out of the hole, and run like hell. Your chances of survival won’t be high but they will be above zero, which is more than they will be if you keep digging.

Who Comes Up with this Stuff

I’m not a fan of advertisements that try to scare buyers into purchasing a product. I find such a tactic to be underhanded and rather distasteful. Fear mongering is the tool of the state, it’s what the state uses to make people into obedient scared serfs, and seeing others sink as low as an organization built upon violence is just say, especially when that entity relates to firearms. Here’s an excerpt from a recent e-mail advertisement I received:

Christopher,

Do you believe me when I say Minnesota is just as dangerous as any other place on the planet?

Well it is… and I will show you what I mean…

No, stop right there. Minnesota is not just as dangerous as any other place on the planet. Let’s take a look at the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Unified Crime Report (UCR) for 2010. According to the UCR Minnesota has 1.8 murders per 100,000 people. Meanwhile the murder rate in Brazil for 2010 was 25 per 100,000 people (the numbers used on Wikipedia were sourced here but I can’t read Spanish so it doesn’t do me much good, Google Translate dues verify the numbers though). That means Brazil has a murder rate ~13.9 times that of Minnesota. I would say Brazil is likely a far more dangerous place than Minnesota.

Obviously one can become a victim of violent crime anywhere but the changes are higher in some areas than others. For example, my chances of being the victim of a violent crime are much higher in North Minneapolis than in the Bondry Waters. That doesn’t mean I can’t be a victim while kayaking the Bondry Waters but the chances are much lower than cruising through North Minneapolis on my bike, therefore North Minneapolis is more dangerous using any common sense definition of the words ‘more’ and ‘dangerous.’

I’m a huge proponent of self-defense, and I recognize the fact that you could be attacked by some no-good thug at any point in your life, but I’m not going to say Minnesota is just as dangerous as any other place in the world. That’s stupid. By that logic driving without wearing a seatbelt is just as dangerous as driving with a seatbelt because in either case you may die in a car crash.

Be Careful What You Wish For

I’ll be honest, a vast majority of my friends don’t hold much in the way of prejudice. I don’t have any overtly racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted friends that I can think of off of the top of my head, which is probably why I forget that monsters like this exist:

The pastor, identified on YouTube as Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, N.C., condemns President Obama’s much-publicized endorsement of same-sex marriage while calling for gays and lesbians to be put in an electrified pen and ultimately killed off.

“Build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there,” Worley suggests in the clip, reportedly filmed on May 13.

He continues: “Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out…and you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out…do you know why? They can’t reproduce!”

Perhaps Worley should be careful what he wishes for. I vaguely remember the leader of some country or another that did something very similar to members of a religion. If history has taught us anything it’s that persecutions often target specific religious group.

Worley may get his wish although the people tossed in his electrified cage may be him and any of his loyal followers.

People like this are why an armed society is necessarily. If given the chance you can bet Worley would act on his desires, he would gladly round up homosexuals and toss them in a cage. He’s a psychopath, he has zero regard for the wellbeing or rights of others. The only effective way to defend against these types of psychopaths when they do manage to obtain power is by refusing to comply and that often means armed resistance. I don’t care if somebody started rounding up homosexuals, jews, blacks, communists, or any other group, I would gladly stand by them and help in their resistance against the tyrants trying to bring harm upon them. It is my sincere hope that those of you reading this would also stand by them.

So Much for a Straight Forward Case

The Zimmerman case has been extremely difficult to follow because of the vast amount of incorrect information be spouted by media outlets. Now that an official investigation is behind held to determine whether or not Zimmerman’s trail will go forward we’re getting more and more evidence supporting Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. First information about Zimmerman’s injuries were released:

Medical records showing that George Zimmerman was treated for a fractured nose and cuts to the back of his head after fatally shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin will likely bolster Zimmerman’s argument that Martin attacked him, CBS News legal analyst Jack Ford said on “CBS This Morning” Wednesday.

The records came to light Tuesday. CBS News has also confirmed they show that Zimmerman had a pair of black eyes when he was examined by a doctor Feb. 27, the day after he shot Martin in a gated Florida community. Zimmerman, who has claimed self-defense, faces a charge of second-degree murder in the shooting.

“This now allows the defense to show up in the courtroom, let George Zimmerman tell his story and bring in a medical expert that says, ‘Black and blue under the eyes, broken nose, cut on the back of the head,'” said Ford, “and the defense can argue that’s consistent with George Zimmerman being attacked by Trayvon Martin, and then the Stand Your Ground defense comes into play.”

Now information has been released indicating damage to Martin’s knuckles that is consistent with the claim that he was punching Zimmerman in the face and that Zimmerman fired at point-blank range:

Cell phone records from Zimmerman that include text messages he sent up to one month after the shooting

There are also two surveillance videos, one from the 7-11 where Martin bought Skittles and an ice tea, the other from the clubhouse in the gated subdivision where Zimmerman shot him.

The special prosecutor’s case also includes Zimmerman’s medical report the day after the shooting. It listed a broken nose, two black eyes and a cut in the back of the head.

A source also told CBS News an unreleased police report noted Zimmerman’s sweatshirt had “grass stains, and was wet on the back.”

Details from Trayvon Martin’s autopsy show the bullet entered the left side of his chest, and shattered the ventrical, one of his heart’s two large chambers but the round did not leave his body.

It’s unfortunate that many people have such an emotional investment in this case that they are unwilling to acknowledge the possibility of Zimmerman’s innocence. I’ve already heard conspiracy theories that claim the doctors who testified to Zimmerman’s injuries were paid off, that the coroner fabricated the evidence of damage to Martin’s knuckles, and that the police have been continuing to fabricate evidence. Apparently Florida is so incredibly racist that it’s not even difficult to get so many people to hop on board this little conspiracy.

This is why the court of public opinion is a bad thing to rely on. If we had relied on public opinion then Zimmerman would likely have been hanged. Even if he’s ruled innocent based on the evidence being brought to light it won’t matter, many people have convinced themselves that Zimmerman is guilty and that law enforcement has generated a massive conspiracy to cover up a race-based crime. No matter what evidence is put forward these people will never believe Zimmerman is innocent and they may decide to exact “justice” after the trial is concluded or dismissed.

Whether he’s ruled guilty or innocent, Zimmerman’s life is probably ruined.