Odd Factoid and More

8.5 hours until Realta Nua!

So, in the wake of the VT shooting I’ve seen several blog posts about guns and stuff. People at work have been talking about guns and stuff. It’s made me think about guns and stuff.

And a random factoid.

This factoid? Over the past 20 years the homicide rate in England has been steadily increasing and, over the same time period, the homicide rate in the United States has been decreasing. This is despite England’s extremely tough anti-gun stance and the United States and it’s guns-guns-guns. The gun laws in England have done nothing to stop homicides. Why do we think that it’ll do anything here?

Also, what’s with anti-concealed carry laws? Why do we have them? They have to be some of the most absurd laws on the books. How exactly do we think these laws will work? Seriously, if I had a handgun, what’s stopping me from carrying it concealed? Nothing. The entire point of a concealed weapon is that it is concealed. Hidden. Not visible. The only way to find out that I had it would be to conduct a random, warrantless search.

Now, it would allow you to tack extra punishment on someone that is already being searched and found to have a gun, but otherwise it doesn’t really do anything. It’s purely a symbolic law.

On to a less politically charged topic.

On the pooshlmer Touhou imageboard a discussion got started about elitism. It was specifically in regards to games, but it really could be applied to anything. Somebody got up and started spouting about how it’s a good thing that Touhou isn’t a popular game series. The reason given is that popularity means that inherently ruins the game.

This line of reasoning is overwhelming popular in elitism. Popular = bad.

Two Best YouTube Videos

Ever.

I’m not kidding. These are unbelievably awesome. Hilarious to the max.

First we have Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)

Intelligent and awesome.

This video is not anywhere near so intelligent. Just simple hilarity. It’s a shrimp. Running on a treadmill. To Yakety Sax.

Stuff Most Folk Don’t Care About

I remember Nathan saying something about Google Reader.  He is completely and utterly correct.  It is awesome.

So I was browsing Share yesterday looking for Nagasarete Airantou and ran across this little file.

Thus making me very, very glad that I am not some fool who can’t read Japanese muddling about on Share.  Aside from the stupidity of randomly downloading files off p2p networks, had I thought this file might have been a good try I would have been very unpleasantly surprised.

No.  I am not explaining what that is.  I wish I didn’t know.  Alas, I do.

However, it is a good time to mention that one should always know what one is downloading.  While you can’t actually read the contents of a file before downloading, not even knowing what it is that the file is supposed to be is just plain stupid.   Sad thing is, I know people who actually have done that.

It’s also a good idea to run a virus/spyware/adware/malware check on stuff you download.

I’d also like to figure out how you can make a .zip or .rar file disguised as an image file.  For all intents and purposes it looks like an image file.  Image file extension tag.  It’s an image.  All that.  But, if you change the extension to .rar or .zip you get a perfectly usable .zip or .rar file.

It’s really nifty.  My guess is that it would extremely simple, but I have yet to bother figuring it out.

I want a Unison Device.

You Know You’re Weird When…

…you’re reading some comic and you think, “That guy draws one mean-sexy shoe,” and those shoes are beaten down old-style tennies and big, clunky, be-buckled, flatbottomed boots.*

But anyway, that guy, that guy being Kenjiro Hata, does have quite the talent at shoe drawing.  The realism of the shoes is quite high, yet he still keeps it cartoony enough to fit the highly cartoony nature of the rest of the artwork.

’sweird.

*I should note that I find heels decidedly unsexy.

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Anyway, on to more serious things.  I find it somewhat amusing that the champions of open-mindedness and tolerance are often extremely close-minded and intolerant folk.  Not always.  But often.

I also find it really amusing that tolerance, as it applies to the phrase ‘open-mindedness and tolerance’  is so poorly chosen.  Tolerating is putting up with something not good because you really can’t do much about it.  It implies that what is being tolerated is something bad.  But that’s not what people mean when they are espousing tolerance.

Again, ’sweird.

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Wuuhuu!  StrikerS.

Why is Nanoha’s Divine Buster so ridiculously more powerful than Subaru’s?  Granted, Nanoha used two Belka cartridges and Subaru only one, but Nanoha’s blast could carve a swath several miles long through a city and Subaru’s just blew up a human sized robot and did minor damage to a wall.

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I learned today that Enthusiast Lady is significantly more nutters than I had previously thought.  She actually thinks that God wisks her up to heaven and they have chats.

There are no words.

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Share is the second most poorly designed p2p service I have ever used.  The worst I have successfully used.

However, it is a goldmine of awesome once working.

Yup.  That’s it.