Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

Cars vs. Firearms

One common thing use pro-gun people like to state is far more people are killed each year in automobile accidents than firearms. The idea behind this is simple, since anti-gunners claim we need to control guns because they kill so many people then we must also strictly control automobiles. I’m doing some research into automobile fatalities (not in any way related to firearms) and decided since I have the data at hand I might as well do a comparison.

Behold the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration trend data (NHTSA) on fatal automobile accidents. Now behold the 2008 (chosen because 2008 is the latest data on the NHTSA website) Unified Crime Report expanded homicide information. Specifically I’m looking at the FBI data on weapons used in homicides.

Since the FBI data only goes from 2004 to 2008 that’s what we’ll stick with.

In 2004 9,385 people were murdered with firearms while 38,444 were killed in automobile accidents. 2005 showed a similar trend with 10,158 people being murdered with firearms and 39,252 people killed in automobile accidents. 2006 continues this trend with 10,225 people killed with a firearm and 38,648 killed in automobile accidents. Guess what happened in 2007? Same thing, 10,129 killed with firearms and 37,435 killed in automobile accidents. Finally we have 2008 where the trend continued as 9,484 people were murdered with firearms and 34,172 were killed in automobile accidents.

In the United States it seems the number of people killed in automobile accidents is a little under four times the number murdered by firearms. If anti-gunners are actually concerned about peoples’ safety they would be lobbying for stricter car control laws instead of gun control laws. Anyways that’s just an interesting observation I made.

Internet Debates

You know what I find hilarious and pathetic at the same time? People who try to argue or debate but end up losing and then try to save face by saying they were just trolling. The phenomenon occurs a lot online where people will get into forum arguments that will span ten pages and finally somebody will have their argument so thoroughly destroyed that they have no recourse besides admitting defeat or using personal insults. At this time the loser will generally claim they were just trolling and actually don’t care.

It’s the ultimate out and you know you’ve won once somebody uses it on you.

This is My Shocked Face

Can’t say that I saw this coming… who am I kidding? I saw this from a mile away:

An estranged former member of direct action anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd alleges it ordered its own boat to be scuttled to win public sympathy.

So why do I believe Mr. Bethune over the current members of Sea Sheppard? For starters Sea Sheppard are backstabbing assholes:

Sea Shepherd distanced itself from Mr Bethune during his detention – though it later claimed this was a ploy to gain a lenient sentence.

Yes while Mr. Bethune was in jail for doing exactly what Sea Sheppard advocates they distance themselves from him. Later of course they claim it was to get him a more lenient sentence. Maybe they should have used some of that money they’ve made for their shitty T.V. show to hire Mr. Bethune a top notch lawyer instead. At least that would have shown their fellow comrade support.

If you want to fight whaling that’s fine, so long as you do it peaceably. Harassing whalers and then boarding their ship isn’t going to go over well with anybody. Hell in most of the world boarding a vessel without permission is usually treated as attempted piracy. Try doing that on a Japanese navel vessel and see how well it goes over. Of course abandoning one of your fellows after he did exactly what he was told to do is just scumbag behavior. Who would join an organization that abandons their people when it’s politically convenient?

Finally I want to close with the following because I’m an asshole:

Sea Shepherd shot to prominence as the futuristic trimaran Ady Gil pursued the Japanese whaler Shonan Maru 2 through Antarctic waters in January.

Pursued it to the bottom of the ocean. Burn!

Being Stupid Costs You

Engadget has a story about Best Buy charging customers $30.00 to apply firmware updates to PS3s. Of course if you read the comments people are claiming this is extorting customers’ ignorance. That may be true but honestly I think it’s just further proof that being stupid will cost you money.

Applying a firmware update to a PS3 is dead simple, but some people are ignorant of that. That ignorance just cost them $30.00 and hopefully they’ll learn a lesson and figure out how to update their own firmware.

Being stupid is costly so do yourself a favor and learn everything you can.

NFA Style Laws for Automobiles

At least that’s what the anti-gunners should say after reading this story:

One person is dead after a car slammed into a group of people on a Minneapolis porch Saturday morning.

Yup somebody ran a car into a group of people. With dangerous automobiles that have the potential of killing multiple people with a single step of the gas pedal the anti-gunners should be advocating for a complete ban of all automobiles manufactured after 1986. Such dangerous weapons should also require permission by both the Department of Transportation and the local sheriff of your area. I’d mention a need for a tax stamp but that already exists in the form of renewing your license plates every year.

Richest 1% of Americans

There is a lot of talk about how we need to increase taxes for the richest Americans. People spout lines about how the rich need to pay “their fair share.” What these people never do is actually look into how much the richest Americans pay in taxes. Solely because I like to rain on peoples’ parades I looked into the matter.

I’ve discovered that the richest 1% of Americans pay 40% of the federal income tax. That means of all the money stolen by the government via income tax 1% of Americans pay 40% of it. In dollars that means the top 1% pay more than the lowest 95%.

Here’s the raw data on the percentage of income taxes per income bracket. I’d say the top 1% are already paying their “fair share” and then some. Maybe instead of looking to gouge these people which gives them cause to consider moving somewhere else (and remember these rich people generally own companies that employ a lot of people) our government should look at reducing the amount of money they spent. I’ll help them out here.

First and foremost bring our overseas troops back home. Our spending on national offense defense is a huge majority of our spending. Cancel all government approved bailouts, if a company is facing bankruptcy they did something wrong and their assets could be sold off to small start up companies who actually have good ideas. Eliminate welfare and social security, we can plan for our retirements better than the government. Disband some of the hundreds of federal agencies because frankly we don’t need an agency that exists only to ensure taxes and regulations on alcohol, tobacco, and firearms are followed. Hell if the government follows my ideas we won’t even need a federal income tax to make ends meet.

That’s Impossible

Apparently an Al-Qaeda plot has been uncovered by I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E:

An al-Qaeda plot to carry out co-ordinated attacks in the UK, France and Germany has been uncovered, Western intelligence sources say.

Small teams of militants were to seize and kill hostages, similar to the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, the sources said.

Sorry but that idea is completely impossible. The Mumbai attack required the user of firearms and firearms are strictly controlled in the UK, France, and Germany. Hey I’ve got an idea. Since gun control has worked so well at preventing mass shootings let’s make suicide bombing illegal! What didn’t anybody think about that?

Well That’s Retarded

With ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, our economy in the toilet, our money losing value faster than Obama is losing voter approval, and hundreds of out major issues our representatives are wasting their time on political correctness:

The measure, passed by the House by voice vote Wednesday night, changes the phrase “mentally retarded” to “an individual with an intellectual disability” in existing health, education and labor law.

I think I finally understand something. Political correctness is directly proportional to the number of words used to describe something. Being “retarded” is one word it’s very politically incorrect but “an individuals with an intellectual disability” is six words so it’s six times more politically correct.

The only thing the politically correct crowd has accomplished here is turning the word disabled into a future insult. Insults such as idiot, moron, retard, etc. all derived from their legitimate medical usage:

At the May 18, 1910 annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded, Goddard proposed definitions for a system for classifying individuals with mental retardation based on intelligence quotient (IQ). Goddard used the terms moron for those with an IQ of 51-70, imbecile for those with an IQ of 26-50, and idiot for those with an IQ of 0-25 for categories of increasing impairment. This nomenclature was the standard of the field for decades. A moron, by his definition, was any person with mental age between eight and twelve. Morons, according to Goddard, were unfit for society and should be removed from society either through institutionalization, sterilization, or both. What Goddard failed to see was that his bias against morons would greatly influence his data later.

So what is my point here? Simple people used the words moron, imbecile, and idiot as insults due to their medical meaning. A person who is being a dumb ass is often called an idiot because they’re acting with the mental age of an infant. Retard is used as an insult because it means somebody who is mentally slow. Changing the term from retard to individual with a disability is just going to make people start using the term mentally disabled as an insult in 10 years. At that point it will be politically incorrect to use the term mentally disabled and we’ll have to come up with a more flowery and politically correct term which will probably end up being at least 10 words in length.

Why the Hell am I paying my taxes for our representatives’ payroll? Oh that’s right because the government has a gun to my head.

Where Can I Buy One

Apparently Mayor Daley is trying to get his police for a new type of firearm. I’ve not heard of this but thanks to Every Day, No Days Off I know about the amazing new semi-fully-automatic weapon:

“Many times [the police are] outgunned, to be very frank,” Daley said at an event in the Englewood neighborhood. “When they come to a scene, someone has a semi-fully-automatic weapon, and you have a little pistol, uh, good luck.”

What these new semi-fully-automatic weapons are I haven’t a clue. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this advanced technology. I’ll post up more details on this amazing new weapon system when I have them.