Blackmoor Vituperative

I thought that the contrast here was interesting. According to the FBI, murders in the USA declined by 10 percent overall during the first half of 2009, while the spike in handgun sales was making national news.

The FBI released data Monday that shows murders dropped by 10 percent from the same period in 2008. Meanwhile, according to data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) shows that during the first six months of this year, gun sales were up. January 2009 background checks rose 28.8 percent over the same month in 2008, February’s NICS checks were up 23.3 percent and in March they were up 29.9 percent over March 2008. The trend continued in April, with NICS checks up 30.3 percent, while May showed a slowdown, up only 15.5 percent, and in June they were up 18.1 percent.

(from Murder Down, Gun Sales Up)

Meanwhile, in the U.K., where law-abiding citizens are disarmed, crimes involving handguns have increased 89% in the past ten years.

Gun crime has almost doubled since Labour came to power as a culture of extreme gang violence has taken hold.

The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year – a rise of 89 per cent.

In some parts of the country, the number of offences has increased more than five-fold.

(from Culture of violence: Gun crime goes up by 89% in a decade)

I am sure it is not just about guns. Nothing is ever so simple. But it is difficult not to see a connection here.

My sweetie and I spent our Christmas Eve watching a movie called Zombie Strippers, which is exactly what it sounds like.

I admit I had very low expectations from Zombie Strippers. I have recently seen a lot of bad attempts at horror-comedy, such as the atrocious Splatter Beach, and I expected no better from Zombie Strippers. To my surprise, it was funny, and gory, and had decent acting (far above par for the genre), and good writing, and the special effects were inventive and well done. In fact, the only thing that prevents it from being classified along with such classics like Evil Dead and Re-Animator is that there is no single standout performance (like Bruce Campbell or Jeffrey Combs in the aforementioned classics). But really, that’s a faint criticism. Zombie Strippers is probably the best horror movie I have seen in quite a while, and the best horror comedy I have seen in a very, very long time.

This is for any potential employers or hiring managers who might take the trouble to Google me before scheduling me for an interview: I do not consent to drug testing. Any medication I may be taking is a matter of interest to two people: me, and my doctor. No one else.

To be more specific, I will consent to the insult and humiliation of pre- or post-employment drug testing if and only if the person making the request has a truly compelling reason for asking. Here are a few reasons I consider adequately compelling:

1. I am or will be directly responsible for the lives of others. For example, if I am a heart surgeon, or if my primary activity will cause the immediate gruesome deaths of the people around me if I make the slightest mistake — some kind of bomb disposal, perhaps.
2. I have access to information which will place others’ lives in immediate danger if it is revealed. For example, if I maintain a server which contains the names and assignments of law enforcement officers. (In fact, I gave my consent for this reason when I worked for the US Coast Guard in Norfolk, VA.)
3. I must attain and maintain a security clearance from the Unites States federal government. (I gave my consent for this reason when I worked for the US Joint Forces Command in Suffolk, VA.)
4. Any other circumstance where my responsibility literally means life or death for another person. The life of another person is more important than my dignity.

I think that should be sufficiently clear, but just in case, here are some reasons that I do not consider adequate:

1. The pre-employment screening is “company policy”. (That’s not a reason: that’s an evasion.)
2. Everyone else in the company, including the owner or stockholders, has consented to be tested. (Peer pressure is not a good reason to smoke, and it is certainly not a good reason to allow someone to treat me like a criminal.)
3. I have access to information which could potentially cost the employer trillions upon trillions of dollars if it is revealed or misused. (No amount of money is worth my privacy and dignity.)

It is my opinion that no employer worth working for will make unnecessary humiliation of the applicant part of the “screening” process, and that no competent, self-respecting person will consent to it unless they are truly desperate.

“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” — Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819

“Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill, An it harm none do what ye will.” — Doreen Valiente, 1964

“I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody business but by own.” — Billie Holiday

If you have not read it (or not read it lately), I suggest you spend some time with Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, by Peter McWilliams.

I just found my wedding ring! I lost it at the beginning of October.

It was in a cardboard box, one of a stack of cardboard boxes that I had been meaning to throw away. But I have some stuff to sell on ebay (old hard drives and so on), so I haven’t. And I was peeling the stickers off one, getting ready to pack my calculus books in it (yay, no more calculus!), and there was this sliding and bumping sound, and I was like, “What’s in here?” And I looked under the old packing slip in it, and there was my ring!

Two months. I had given up on finding it.

Chad Perrin has a short article on TechRepublic giving a back-of-the-napkin overview on encryption as it is viewed by the courts. It is worth checking out and clicking the relevant links.

I have set up a free, public OpenID provider at http://www.blackgate.net/openid/, using software from Community-ID.

Fedora 12 has been released into the wild, and the general response is positive.

Every time a new version of Fedora (or any major Linux distribution) is released, there is always a great deal of confusion over the various releases: x86, i386, 686, and so on. Here is a quick guide that covers the vast majority of cases:

i386

• A generic “lowest common denominator” designation for Intel 80386 compatible CPUs (includes all of the above, but does not take advantage of extended instructions on those later CPUs).

Don’t use this unless you have to.

i686

• All Intel 32-bit Pentiums (excluding Pentium 1 and Pentium MMX)
• All AMD 32-bit Athlons

If your computer is several years old, you will probably have nothing to lose by using this version. However…

x86_64

• AMD’s Athlon 64, Athlon 64-FX, and Opteron
• Intel EMT64 processors – Pentium 4, Pentium D, Pentium Extreme Edition, Celeron D, Xeon and Pentium Dual-Core processors, the Atom 230 and 330 and in all versions of the Core 2, Intel Core i9, Core i7, Core i5 and Core i3

If your computer is less than a few years old, try this version first. If it won’t work on your machine, you will know almost immediately. If it does work on your machine, you may find that the performance is improved slightly (when compared to a 32 bit kernel), because the compiler was able to take advantage of slight improvements made in the instruction set for your processor.

So, start with x86-64. If that does not work, try i686. If that doesn’t work, try i386.

Good luck!