evolution

Due to the combination of unfortunate events in my personal life and my professional goals, this blog will be dark (mutatis mutandis) for a period not less than one week and probably extending through the month of February.

Thanks for playing.

One of my favorite bloggers, Bill Quick of Daily Pundit, noticed my thoughts on the “no-concealed-carry” signs now popping up all over, the law having taken effect on 1 January.

He asks a good question on his own blog:

I wonder how much of this posting of signs to circumvent concealed carry laws is at the behest of liability insurers?

And later in his own comments section:

Once again, I wonder what is driving this? You’d think that if somebody is injured or killed because legal cc folks were forbidden to carry their weapons, the owners would be laying theselves open to huge lawsuits. I have no idea where the law stands on this, though. Does anybody know of any cases that would be more revealing? Or do the legal eagles of the insurance companies see it the opposite way?

The question here is one of liability for injury if, say, one were legally prevented from carrying a concealed firearm into a business as provided for under the law (which is here, the enrolled version from the last session), and one then sustains some kind of attack or injury that might have been prevented by one’s firearm.

Anyone out there want to rule on that? I think, unfortunately, that this is one of those unclear things that is going to have to be resolved in court if and when it happens.

Lawrence.com’s Chris Wristen, on the signing of British soccer star David Beckham:

The headlines screamed from the front page of CNN.com on Thursday morning: “Beckham coming to America.”

ESPN.com called it a “British Invasion.”

The folks at MSNBC.com were even more enthusiastic, proving it with an exclamation point: “Coming to America!”

[snip]

Part of the Los Angeles soccer club’s hope in signing Beckham is that his personal star power and marketability will be the kick-in-the-pants that American soccer has been longing for. The Galaxy hope Beckham’s mere presence will put fans in the seats at home and away games and help the sport surge in popularity among people over the age of, say, 12 or 13.

But is this a realistic expectation?

Wristen answers in the negative, as you’ll see if you read his piece.

David Beckham and his celebrity wife, the former “Posh Spice” Victoria, may be giant stars in England, but it’s… England. They don’t rate any higher than neo-trailer-chic celebrity-wannabes like Britney Spears, mostly because they are neo-trailer-chic wannabes like Britney Spears. That, and soccer is… colossally boring. There’s nothing I’d rather miss than eleven pretentiously-named Brazilians and eleven boiled-beef-addled Englishmen kicking each other in the shins for two hours.

Soccer isn’t a sport, it’s a pretense; like disc golf, or lacrosse. Everybody remembers the white boy from Overland Park in college who wore the European football club jersey everywhere. Tell me you didn’t hate that guy.

Pretentious and boring is a bad combination in America; that’s why soccer has and always will fail as a spectator sport in this country. That’s the discussion we should be having: Why is anything a soccer player does news at all here?

Gerard van der Leun says what I was just thinking:

As always in these times, both the Right and the Left are wrong, have been wrong for quite some time, and will continue in their error since the object of their policies is neither victory abroad or security at home, but the mere destruction of the other in political terms. It is a small and ignoble goal, but it seems to be all our pundits and politicians are capable of at this time. The times demand heros and giants but we are only seeing pygmies and cardboard figures. This is likely to continue until some deeper shock wakes us from ou[r] sleep.

I had thought that 9.11 would be that shock, but I guess it just picked the scab.

Read the rest.

I

That blowhard Virgil. Hand
me another arrow. Hey –
that one’s got footprints!

II

Yeah – carry your own
fat ass across the river
of blood. Seriously.

Just so you know, I’m doing this post solely to provoke a reaction from my parents. My stepdad is a well-known pharmacist here in Lawrence, and my mom once worked for the very same organization that he does. This story is probably one of three things on Earth that leaves him sputtering with anger.

Remember Robert Courtney, the Kansas City pharmacist and Kansas native convicted of defrauding thousands of customers by diluting their prescriptions and pocketing the savings. By doing so, he stole over $19 million — and got 30 years in prison. His Wikipedia entry says that 17 cancer patients died as a result of diluted chemotherapy drugs.

Courtney thinks that his sentence should be cut by eight months due to “good behavior”. If you were a judge, would you be inclined to give Robert Courtney credit for “good behavior”?

43 days until my first actuary exam. Got 33/55 on the practice set I just finished.

One needs 70% just to have a chance to pass. And I’ve been poring through an arcane (to say the least) Oracle database at work, with about 60,000 records and about 500 interlinked tables. So, I’m feeling great right now.