So, we’re filling out some form for the DJ that’ll be at the wedding. There’s a section on the back where they ask for some trivia about the bride and groom. One of them is ‘favorite Movie’
Theresa: Okay, favorite movie?
Me: Uh.. don’t really see why that’s important.
Theresa: Oh, ‘cmon. Pick one.
Me: Okay, 300.
T: You can’t pick that. You’ve only seen it twice.
Me: So?
T: You can’t pick that!
Me: I’m about 2 seconds away from standing up, yelling THIS! IS! SPARTA! and kicking you in the chest.
T: *rolls eyes*
This weekend I saw something pretty neat. A fellow I know, who’s quite inventive, had some folks over for a party, and he whipped out his gas powered blender.
Yes, he built it himself. I think he used a weed-whacker for the motor, and you can see he’s got some handlebars on it too with the throttle control.
Pretty neat, and I have no idea why there’s no sound on that video. I shot it with my cellphone.
Oh, he builds custom knives too.
Okay, we went and saw The Dark Knight this weekend.
Whoa! That was awesome! I went there with some really high expectations and it surpassed them. I remember thinking twice that it was about ready to end and both times I was OK with it, but the awesomeness just kept rolling.
There isn’t a single, solitary dull moment in the entire two and a half hours.
This isn’t one for children that are easily scared though. Heath Ledger, as the Joker, had me squirming in my seat at one point in the movie. Theresa closed her eyes for some of that scene. It wasn’t gory, but you couldn’t stop yourself from forming some really nasty images of what was coming next. I have absolutely no idea how they pulled off getting Two Face to look the way they did, and it was rather ghastly. The kind of stuff that’ll probably give kids nightmares.
Go see it.
As Prof. Steven Levitt concluded in 2004, “Ultimately, there appears to be little basis for believing that concealed weapons laws have had an appreciable impact on crime.”
Well, that’s odd. A couple hours ago they were pushing stories that would lead one to believe that CCW holders were murdering sons of bitches laying in wait for their moment of rage.
Well, more blood dancing from the Brady Campaign
What struck me most about this report was how they closed it out:
By the way, this makes the third concealed carry permit-holder charged with murder since July 5.A fourth has recently pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Seriously? Okay, for one they’re making a big deal about just being charged with murder. There haven’t actually been convicted yet , but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re eventually all convicted. We’ll presume 4 murders by CCW holders from July 5 to July 17th.
Four. That’s not a huge number.
In 2006 there were 17,034 murder convictions in the US. That means we’re rolling about 1400 murders in this country every month. That’s about 700 every two weeks, roughly the same time frame that we’re dealing with from July 5 to 17. Of course, I’m totally ignoring the simple fact that homicides and murders increase during the summer months. It’d hunt those numbers down but that isn’t really needed right now.
Presuming that we’re working with an even distribution, which we aren’t, that would mean that CCW holders are responsible for about 0.5% of the murders in this time period.
So, in order for the “ZOMG!11 CCW HOLDERS ARE MURDERERS IN WAITING” argument to make sense CCW holders would have to make up less than 0.5% of the population. From what I gather it’s actually closer to 1% overall, which would indicate that even with the numbers stacked against us, ignoring the summer months, and cherry picking a time span where 4 CCW holders comitted a murder you’re still half as likely to commit a murder if you have a CCW permit than the population at large.
On the other hand, presuming my 1% CCW rate is correct, if there actually were an even distribution then we’d see about 170 muders by CCW holders a year. That’s about 14 a month. 3 a week. Constant.
Guess what? Ain’t happening.
So it’s safe to presume that the murder rate is lower amongst CCW holders when compared to the general population.
Think about that.
Folks that certainly own a gun, and that can legally carry it around town with them, very capable of committing murder within seconds… don’t. At least not with any regularity to make a significant impact on national figures.
Now, if I were a moron I’d proclaim from on high that issuance of CCW permits would dramatically lower the murder rate, but I’m not a moron, at least not in this instance. That’d be about as dumb as the Kellerman study that says just keeping a gun in the house makes you 43 17 12 times more likely to be killed by a gun. Ain’t the gun that changed the odds, just like it isn’t the permit that changes things.
It’s the people.
Had a little bit of brain lock today while working. It happens to me when I try and work on two things at once. I hate that. The best way for me to get out of it is to take a short break and go back to work once I stop trying to solve both problems at the same time.
So, I took a 15 minute break and hit the range today around the time most folks would be eating lunch.
So, as a law-abiding gun owner I unlocked my gun room, unlocked the safe, removed a pistol, verified that it was unloaded, wiped up a little extra oil that I found on it, verified that it was unloaded again, cased it up, placed it in my vehicle in an area where I could not reach it while driving as per Michigan law, drove to the range, shot for about 10 minutes, and reversed the whole process when I got home.
In short the ‘Safety Inspection’ step has been removed, or will be removed when the law actually goes into effect. You can now mail the completed pistol purchase permit in. We’re a long way from perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Okay, get this.
The day after I picked up a package from FedEx because they couldn’t find the house I got a postcard from them.
It was asking us to call them up and let them know my proper address, since the one we gave them apparently doesn’t exist.
A postcard, folks. With our address written right there on the front. A postcard that was postmarked after we had already called on the issue. Worse: It was handwritten. That means somebody sat down and took the time to write out address out and then on the reverse side check the box asking us to provide them with our address.
Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.
Okay, little educational primer here on the heels of my FedEx post. I figure if a guy that does it for a living can’t figure this stuff out some of y’all might benefit from this knowledge too.
Addresses 101
Those numbers on your mailbox weren’t delivered by a fairy. They’re calculated, and 99% of the time they make darned good sense too.
Somewhere in your area there’s what I’d call a “zero street”. Addresses to the north of it will be counting up, addresses to the south will also be counting up. If you live in a north/south street that’s why you’ve got “N” or “S” on there. It’s so the post office knows which side of that divide you live on. The same happens with east/west streets too. Heck, you can combine them into whacky combinations like “SE” and “NW” to identify which quadrant you live in.
Learn where these are. In the case of Grand Rapids, MI they are Division and Fuller. Where they intersect is the heart of our Cartesian plane.
Distance 101
Okay, so now that we know where our “zero streets” are how do we figure out were folks are? Well, addresses aren’t assigned randomly. There’s some simple math behind them. An increase of 1 in an address is about 2 meters in actual space along that axis.
In other words, if your address is 100 Main St. and the guy down the road from you is 200 Main St. you can pretty much assume that your driveways are just about 200 meters apart. The difference in the addresses is 100, multiple that by 2, and there’s your 200 meters.
You can also use this to find the offset of an address from a major street. If you’re living in an area where everything is a nice grid this works great. Roads are usually dropped at even intervals unless you’re in an old town or things are cramped.
The numerically named roads are easy. If you’re on 68th St. you are in the 6800 block. If a guy had a house right on the corner with a driveway matching up the street his address would be 6800. The distance that 68th street (6800 block) sits from 72nd street (7200 block) is: (7200-6800)* 2 meters. That’s 800 meters, or half a mile. So if you need to make a delivery to 7000 Pinewood you know that it’s exactly a quarter mile away from 68th street and 72nd street on Pinewood.
Now, when trying to figure out where a road like “Pinewood” actually is you just have to infer that from the addresses along a street that runs perpendicular from it. That’s just something you learn over time. So, if 68th St. and 72nd St. were east/west roads, and you knew that Pinewood, going north/south, was on the 1600 block, and you had an address of 1200 68th St. you’d know that the house was a quarter mile east (toward the center of town, the zero-street) of the intersection of 68th and Pinewood.
This is all stuff I learned when calculating, roughly,how far I’d ran back when I actually ran around towns.
One would think that delivery drivers would know how this, but maybe they don’t.
Now, onto the bigger scale of things:
Interstate Highways: Direction
Even numbers (I-94, I-80, etc) indicate east/west paths. Odd numbers (I-69, I-75) indicate north/south paths. Yes, they don’t always go in those cardinal directions, but for the most part you’re going one direction on them.
The exception to that rule is when the Interstate has 3 digits in it. That means you’re dealing with a short highway constructed just to deal with city traffic. If the first digit is odd you’re going to cut right through the city. I-196 here in Grand Rapids is a good example of that. If the first digit is even then you are going to go around the city. I-496 around Lansing is a good example of that one.
With a cursory glance at a map and that knowledge you can navigate your way across the entire US. It might not always give you the best route, but you will get there eventually.
Interstate Highways: Distance
The “zero point” for all interstate highways is the southwest corner of a state. If you enter a state from the east on an east/west highway and you are at exit 480 you have about 480 miles until you pop out on the other side. Likewise if you are traveling south on an interstate and you pass exit 80 you have about 80 miles until you hit the next state border.
Mile markers and exit numbers don’t walk hand-in-hand like addresses and street numbers do, but they are close enough to figured out your estimated time of arrival.
So, there you go. Road navigation 101.
