Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

Blame the Victim

You know this whole blame the victim mentality goes beyond annoying. A “study” was just released that attempts to explain why some kids get bullied:

Kids who get bullied and snubbed by peers may be more likely to have problems in other parts of their lives, past studies have shown. And now researchers have found at least three factors in a child’s behavior that can lead to social rejection.

The factors involve a child’s inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals.

So the study is saying the reason some kids get beat up is because those kids don’t pick up on nonverbal cues from their “pals.” So it’s obviously the victim’s fault that they are victims. That makes sense. Let me paraphrase another potential situation here:

Women who get rapped by peers may be more likely to have problems in other parts of their lives, past studies have shown. And now researchers have found at least three factors in a women’s behavior that can lead to being raped.

The factors involve a woman’s inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from men.

That’s only logical of course. Please note that last bit was sarcasm in the highest degree. Cripes!

Surprise, Making Things Illegal Doesn’t Stop Them

In the pursuit of common knowledge a research project was issued to determine if banning the use of cellular phones while driving was beneficial. Anybody who understands human nature already predicted the answer though. Apparently banning the use of cell phones while driving doesn’t stop people from using them while driving.

Go figure.

Virginia Tech Still Isn’t Getting It

Virginia Tech is still going about gun violence prevention in the wrong manner. Currently the campus is looking at banning ammunition, including Airsoft pellets and Painballs. Here is part of the proposed ban:

Resolved, that Policy # 8300, Student Code of Conduct – Weapons be amended as follows:

Student Code of Conduct – Weapons

Unauthorized possession, storage, or control of firearms, weapons, on university property, including storing weapons in vehicles on campus as well as in the residence halls. Furthermore, ammunition can not be stored in any residence halls on campus. (Note: organizational weapons of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, approved by the commandant, are not prohibited by this policy.) Weapons

Firearms are defined as any gun, rifle, pistol, or handgun designed to fire any projectile including but not limited to bullets, BBs, pellets, or shots (including paint balls), regardless of the propellant used. Ammunition is defined as any material intended for use in a firearm, capable of being projected by a weapon and/or makes the weapon operational. Other weapons are defined as any instrument of combat or any object not designed as an instrument of combat but carried for the purpose of inflicting or threatening bodily injury.

Anybody who goes there needs to group behind your local Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and do everything you can to ensure this resolution doesn’t pass.

Umm… What

This certainly falls under news that makes you go, “What the fuck?” Dvorak Uncensored posted a bizarre story that could only come from the Commonwealth. Australia is looking at banning porn with women having A cup breasts. From the article and no I’m not making this up:

Breasts came under the spotlight a year ago, as Senators Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett commenced a campaign against publicly available porn. Rounding up magazines from corner shops and filling stations, Senator Joyce claimed that publications featuring small-breasted women were encouraging paedophilia.

Hear that ladies? If you have small breasts you’re encouraging pedophilia! Obviously the next logical step here is to arrest and imprison all women who have A-cup sized breasts for distributing child pornography.

Body Scanner Fail

Bruce Schneier linked to a video of a person sneaking bomb components pasted on of those fancy full body scanners the TSA wants to put everybody through.

The video is in German but you can tell what’s going on even without knowing the language the French fear.

More Smith and Wesson News From SHOT Show

This time it isn’t good as The Firearms Blog reports. The FBI nailed one of their executives for bribery. The FBI agents posted as representatives of an African nation and apparently the executive attempted to bribe them. Ouch!

Also expect the Brady Bunch and Bloomberg’s Posse to make a press release attempting to say this was due to weak gun laws.

Eight People Shot Dead in Virginia

A lone psycho in Virginia has managed to kill either people. Not many details have been given but this piece of information I thought was rather interesting:

At one point, a police helicopter was fired on and forced to land with a ruptured fuel tank.

That’s a lot more hardcore than usual. Normally in these cases the shooter would kill himself when the police arrived. Wait for the Brady Campaign and Bloomberg’s Posse to make an announcement saying the gun caused the crime. Also I’m betting they say it’s an AK-47 at some point.

ABC News “Discovers” “Secret Bible Code” on Military Equipment

Here is an interesting e-mail I just received. Apparently ABC News just “discovered” super secret Jesus Bible code on some of our military equipment. From the article:

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The Michigan company, as you can guess, is Trijicon. Trijicon has been putting Bible verse references on their equipment from day one as far as I know. But of course according ABC News this is some great pushing of Christianity. Oh but this is classic:

“This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country,” said Weinstein. “It’s literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we’re fighting. We’re emboldening an enemy.”

I call bullshit.

This entire thing is stupid. First of all this isn’t some mysterious “Bible code” it’s printed in plain sight. It’s always been there and Trijicon has never been shy about it. Second I doubt any enemy combatants can see that tiny print while they’re being shot at and hence aren’t going to know they were shot by a “Jesus gun.” Those of us big into guns have known about this for a long time meanwhile ABC News reports this as if they discovered it and it’s some kind of grand conspiracy.

Don’t like the fact that Bible versus are printed on your optic equipment? Here are two options. First file it off. Second buy something else. I understand military personnel generally don’t have a choice in the equipment they are issued but for us private citizens it’s a right we enjoy, voting with our dollar. If you’re in the military and it offends you so dearly that your equipment has a Bible verse printed on it realize you probably have other equipment with similar “secret” markings.

This isn’t a separation of church and state issue. This is an issue of a private company making a product. It’s not military officials making soldiers pray to a Christian god, or forcing soldiers to carry a copy of the Catholic Bible. It’s some markings on a gun put there by the manufacturer because the founder believes in Christianity. Quite a few companies do things like this.

Orders of Magnitude

Remember the big swine flu scare of 2009? Probably not I mean it’s not like there was wall to wall coverage about how it was going to be the flu to end the existence of our miserable species on this planet. Anyhow we’ve got some numbers of Oceania in regards to predicted deaths versus actual deaths. First:

Sir Liam pointed out that there were the same experts who predicted that up to 65,000 people might die from swine flu this winter – a figure which was later downgraded to 1,000.

So first they were predicting 65,000 people were going to die. Then they downgraded it to 1/65,000 of the original value. That’s 65 TIMES fewer people. And what was the actual death toll? Well:

To date there have been 360 deaths from swine flu in the UK (251 in England, 64 in Scotland, 28 in Wales and 17 in Northern Ireland). But the vast majority of those infected have had either a mild disease or no symptoms at all.

So a little over 1/3 the number of people they predicted were going to die. This once against demonstrates how the mass media will hype anything to get a story. Of course you know the governments of the United Kingdom will proclaim the lower number of deaths was a result of the actions taken by the said governments. Might as well take credit where credit isn’t due.

Further more I’m almost willing now to believe the conspiracy theories about the swine flu being a plague designed by the world governments to lower the population. I’m not seen a government plan or program not end up being a total failure yet. This story lends credibility to the conspiracy theorists.