Christopher McKitterick's Blog, page 17
December 20, 2012
Guns don't kill people, madmen and obesity and disease do.
How's that for an incendiary title? Now that I have your attention. I should be grading finals, but growing impatience with people demanding that the government take away more of our freedoms has driven me to write this essay.
Like every sane person, I was shocked and sickened by Friday's school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. I couldn't listen to the radio after a while, yet the cable-news stations were still running images of it 24/7 last I saw (while in a restaurant, of all places). I haven't had cable for decades, so it was disgusting to witness the media frenzy: People's suffering is nothing but chum in the water for the for-profit media conglomerates. Do they think people want to watch horrors like that all the time? We must, because corporations only do what raises profits, and in the media that's all about what raises ratings.
As you might have experienced yourself, when exposed to this barrage of horror, Americans immediately began calling for new rules and regulations about firearms:
"It's past time for new gun regulations!"
"We need to ban any weapon designed only for killing people!"
"No one needs an assault rifle!"
"Renew the Assault Weapons Ban!"
"We will only be safe when there are no more guns!"
In 2010, we saw 29,000 deaths from firearms in the US. Broken down, the majority (16,586) were from suicide, which I see as a valid use for a gun (another freedom we've given up); next is homicide at 10,801 - the one that worries everyone; accidental discharges kill 776; police kill about 270; the last of which is about the same as those designated "unknown," at 230 per year in the US.
So, here's an essay arguing why we must retain the right to own and bear firearms. For your convenience, I've put together a little table of contents that'll whisk you to portions of this long post (assuming LiveJournal allows internal-page linking):
Other things that contribute to human death.
Defining "assault weapons."
Argument 1: Guns Don't Kill People, People Do.
Argument 2: Hunting.
Argument 3: Bad Governments.
Argument 4: The End of the World.
Argument 5: Practicality.
Argument 6: My Experience with Bad Guys.
Summary.
Cars. They kill 34,485 people in the US per year, or about 94 people per day. Around the world, cars kill 260,000 per year - the leading cause of children's deaths worldwide. Safety rules in the US have much improved passenger and even pedestrian survival, so perhaps this could serve as a model.
Alzheimer's disease. This kills 82,435 people per year in the US, or about 226 people per day. I'm all for banning it, but good luck.
Suicide. Self-harm kills 36,909 people per year in the US, or about 101 people per day. Mental-health care, anyone?
Smoking tobacco. This toxic behavior kills 435,000 people per year in the US, or about 1,192 people per day. We've known tobacco is toxic for a long time, and the death rate used to be much worse. Why haven't we banned cigarettes?
Similarly, alcohol kills 85,000 people per year in the US, or about 233 people per day. Why is alcohol still legal? Oh, right, we tried that. It went so well, with no unintended consequences. Yet our legal system is so twisted that pot (the drug of relaxation, which causes zero deaths per year) is still illegal while booze (the drug of violence) is not.
Poison. Accidental poisonings kill 41,592 people per year in the US, or about 87 people per day. According to the CDC, "unintentional poisoning death rates have been rising steadily since 1992." But there's no uproar about removing toxic substances from our homes and environment.
Sexually transmitted disease. This (also mostly preventable) set of fun-related illness kills 20,000 people per year in the US, or about 55 people per day. If stopping STDs meaning banning casual sex (people have demanded this, too!), I say we fight that intrusion into our privacy, as well!
Obesity and being overweight (sometimes defined as "poor diet and inactivity"). This mostly preventable disease kills 365,000 people per year in the US (or 112,000, depending on study methodology), or between 300 and 1,000 people per day. Why don't we hear an outcry to reduce the growing obesity epidemic and increase health? Why doesn't the FDA outlaw "foods" that kill us? And inactivity, and so on? Heck, wheat is far more likely to kill you than a madman with a gun! So why do we still allow the food industry to poison our children with that stuff? Why do we let soda-pop manufacturers into our schools to kill our children? Why do we let them advertise and sell addictive, unregulated, sugar-and-grain substances to people below the age of 21? The best way to save people is to make these things illegal!
Better yet, let's ban Death. In the US, The Grim Reaper kills 2,507,000 per year, or about 6,868 people per day - several times as much as obesity alone. In fact, Death eventually claims everyone. Why aren't our tax dollars going into robot-body and brain-upload research so we needn't worry about physical death? Where are the protests demanding brain-backups for everyone?
Now you've gone off the rails, Chris, you're thinking. Okay, I'll stop, but you get the idea.
Back to banning guns. How about just banning "assault weapons"? In 1994, the US instituted what's called "The Assault Weapons Ban," which prohibited new ownership of any non-collectable, semi-automatic gun with a detachable magazine (or "clip") and at least two other cosmetic identifiers.
I'll go on record saying I'm fine with banning true assault weapons. By that I don't mean semi-auto rifles, pistols, shotguns, and so forth; I mean true military weapons. Let me clarify definitions: An "assault rifle" is a weapon intended for tactical assault missions. They include portable machine guns designed for sustained automatic fire in battle, and sub-machine guns designed for support roles in battle. Regular semi-automatic guns - that is, they self-reload using some of the pressure released in firing a cartridge - only fire once per trigger pull, and this is the kind of gun you or I can legally buy today. If you have a Class 3 license (dealer, collector, specially permitted), you can buy fully automatic military-grade weapons, grenade launchers, and so forth... banning these seems fine to me, but I don't see the point, because they're so rare and expensive to purchase and license as to be irrelevant in terms of public safety. Nonetheless, my point is that "assault rifle" is a misleading term, and most gun-rights advocates don't have strong feelings about outright public bans against fully automatic, military-grade weapons. Or grenade launchers, SCUD missiles, thermonuclear bombs, or so forth. Fine, outlaw 'em all, for everyone - including governments - worldwide. If we don't ban them for everyone everywhere, it won't make much of a difference, because criminals seeking them can always buy such things from illegal arms-dealers. Regardless, I don't feel that my personal freedom in desiring something like that is sufficient when balanced against the public danger in allowing such things to be available. By anyone, including governments.
Herein lies the real crux of the matter: How many of your personal freedoms and Constitutionally guaranteed rights are you willing to sacrifice in the interest of perceived public safety? Are you comfortable with the unintended consequences that might arise from giving non-human entities (such as governments) unlimited powers "to serve and obey and guard men from harm"? Because there are a lot more dangers out there that can harm us, and once we start handing over more power to power structures, once we start choosing perceived safety or even comfort over freedom and the ability to exercise our creative energies, we as a species begin to wither. Will banning all guns in the hands of individual owners cause Humankind to perish? Of course not.
But what's next? Should we ban automobiles? We ought to, because in the hands of human beings they kill a lot more Americans than guns in the hands of madmen. How about doughnuts? Sugar-and-wheat junk-foods are bigger killers than anything else. If so, then why not ban inactivity? Even a Chocolate-Frosted-Sugar-Bombs addict can maintain a certain level of health by staying physically active, so let's ban that!
I am much more concerned about the "USA Patriot Act," indefinite detentions, government programs like Guantanamo Bay prison, and the Utah Data Center than I am about getting shot by a madman with a gun.
So why am I about to argue that we should retain our right to own and bear arms in this country? It's well-known that I'm a progressive type, socially liberal, a voter for people like Carter (well, in elementary school, anyway), Clinton, and Obama. I think we spend far too much on war that could be spent developing things that could save the world; I believe "the war on terror" is rooted in religionism, racism, nationalism, and corporate interests, because it has not only failed to stop terrorism, but actually increased it (does violence ever cure violent thoughts? how can you kill a meme?); I think insurance should be nonprofit; I think we should spend the money wasted on the expanding mental-health services and addiction treatment would be far more beneficial than imprisoning drug-users; I think we should vastly expand support for public education; and so on. Get the idea?
I'm also a proponent of personal freedom, because without freedom what do we really have? Without the freedom to create, we cannot grow. Without freedom, we are nothing. Anyhow, my arguments for retaining gun-ownership rights in the US:
Argument 1: Guns Don't Kill People, People Do
You've heard this one before, far too often, I'm sure, as the NRA lives and breathes this line. But it's true: Guns are not the problem; rather, something's sick in our nation to give rise to the gun violence we see. Other industrialized, gun-totin' nations don't have nearly our gun-crime rate. Something at the very root of this nation is what's broken, and part of it is that the Left and Right do not speak the same language, and because we all now live in "internet bubbles" that exclude the other side's opinions, all we see is what we already know and want to see. I wonder if this post will even be seen by eyes that need to see it.
Car-bombs are much more effective as tools for mass-murder than guns. Remember the Oklahoma City bombing? One Right-wing lunatic (with assistance from another) used a fertilizer bomb to kill 168 people, including 19 children under the age of six, and injured more than 680 others. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a 16-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. Or last year's attack in Oslo by a Norwegian racist, who killed eight people and injured at least 209 others - despite the bomber selecting a day and time when very few would be in the vicinity of the blast. If we want to stop mass-murder, we should outlaw car-bombs and arson (which kills hundreds in the US each year). Oh, wait.
Argument 2: Hunting
A lot of good - even progressive - people go hunting because they feel it's the most-humane way to acquire healthy meat, and a lot of others because they can't afford organic meat. Also, the deer population (for example) needs some kind of check since we've killed off our top predators. Do I want to see people hunting rare animals? Of course not; we should totally enact and enforce laws that prevent crimes. But it makes complete sense for people to be able to own guns for legal hunting purposes. Do hunters actually use semi-auto rifles like AK-47s and AR-15s to go hunting? Sure they do; in fact, the large-capacity clips are very popular among people like boar hunters.
Argument 3: Bad Governments
I'm continually stunned and appalled by the conservative right-wing, which is perfectly happy granting enormous powers to the government when it suits their agendas ("Damn furriners! Mooslim ter'rists! Amurika, fuk ya!"), then shouting about how things like the Affordable Care Act are the End of the World. I hate being conflated with these people. These are the same types who also paste on bumper stickers to inform us, "You'll have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hand." Irony, much?
Even so, I think the main reason they're okay with letting the government erode most of our rights "during wartime" (even during an eternal war against an amorphous and unkillable mental construct) and grow massively in regards to "homeland security" while being totally unwilling to allow the same government to take away their right to bear arms (or other right-wing-pleasing rights) is that they feel they could mount an insurgency against said government should it grow too powerful. Because they let it grow so powerful. Irony, that.
True, if every red-blooded American decided to stand up against tyranny tomorrow with force of arms, most would perish, because we've allowed the government to build and stockpile horrific weapons of war combined with intrusive surveillance technologies. But such insurgencies always win, in the long run: In Afghanistan they drove out the Soviets and will soon drive us out; in Libya they defeated Muammar Gaddafi; and they're finally making headway in Syria. This argument is why the "Founding Fathers" of the US made sure we enjoyed the right to own and bear arms, because they remembered what it was like to live under tyranny. This is why I feel it's important to retain our right to semi-auto firearms, including those that use large magazines - bad guys can get them, regardless, but could we do so if our government were to suddenly veer deeply into tyrannical territory?
Argument 4: The End of the World
Many of these types also believe that we stand at the brink of Armageddon. And they're probably right, though for the wrong reasons. Climate change, overpopulation, resource depletion, loose bioweapons, and so forth are infinitely more likely to bring about the end of advanced civilization than gods descending from On High... hell, the Zombie Apocalypse is more likely than that! But we're closer to the end of the world than ever, and those who are armed and part of a healthy community are much more likely to survive than unarmed folk.
So they believe gun ownership is vital to freedom and survival, and I think they're not wrong on that score. Same with cars: I can foresee a day when a massively more powerful government (say, like California's) might decide No more internal-combustion engines! And they might have good reason for this. But imagine the outcry. Not going to happen, at least not until you start seeing so many electric cars out there that they're ending up as 16-year-olds' first vehicles in places like Iowa. (Yes, I know electrics still get most of their power from fossil fuel in the form of coal.)
Argument 5: Practicality
Talk of banning guns is just impractical. The Soviet Union manufactured so many millions of AK-47s that they will never disappear. Published records of registered firearms in the USA suggest that there's about one for every man, woman, and child here... and that's only registered firearms. Plus, there are many times more in the world at large. Guns don't become unusable unless they're not maintained, and gun owners (as opposed to criminals) take good care of them. So if we banned guns tomorrow, they'd still be around for, oh, forever. And they'd only be owned by those willing to keep them despite the law. I bet that most gun owners would keep them, anyway, and they'd start private machining groups to build and repair them for one another, and soon there'd be so many out there - and dangerous ones, to boot, that might explode - that we'd be worse than ever.
Unlike pedophile priests, guns will never die unless poorly maintained. The only guns we can collect (as buybacks - the most likely method - or enforced turn-ins) are those owned by law-abiding folks who will not fight back against tyranny. The criminals won't turn them in... but you can argue theirs won't last as long because they're criminals. We try to stop criminals, like pedophiles, through a combination of moral teaching, laws, and the criminal justice system. But they still crop up. The good part, if you can see it that way, is that they eventually grow old and die (or get caught and, thus, stop).
Let's look at using those same tools for guns. Moral teaching: Check. Gun-owner parents pass on gun safety and ethics. Laws: Check, though we can clearly increase waiting periods, have standard background checks, and so forth that we don't have now. Criminal justice system: Check. However, people who are going to engage in gun crimes are just as unaffected by this as the people who are going to engage in any crime. Pedophile priests, murderers, and so forth do what they do despite laws. Criminals who use guns in the commission of crimes do that despite gun laws. It's the people who are the problem in both cases. Eliminating, say, a realistic 10% of guns in the USA (good luck removing more of them) would do nothing to affect the criminals who use them in crimes.
I understand the argument that having fewer guns in the world would mean fewer cheap guns for everyone, including criminals, but that argument is akin to saying we should restrict the sale of diamonds in order to cut the rate of diamond-theft. I suspect doing so would only increase diamond thefts, because now they would be worth much more if they weren't freely available. Solves nothing. The only way to stop shootings - most of which are crimes of passion - is to confiscate every gun in the world; heck, you'd also have to ban police from carrying, because they shoot more people than mass-murderers do. I don't want to live in a world that bans ownership of things some people don't like, because some people don't like a lot of things I find valuable or important.
Argument 6: My Experience with Bad Guys
A few months ago, a serial robber tried breaking into my home. He got so far as to partially open and reach around my sliding-glass door in an apparent effort to find what was preventing it from opening further, even after I turned on the overhead light. Considering how many robberies (some violent) have been going on around here, I was really glad to be armed. (And even gladder that I didn't have to use the shotgun on the man.) The police arrived a few minutes later. If the guy had succeeded in breaking in, the cops wouldn't have been there in time. This took place after 4:00am, so I was bleary-eyed and not ready to defend myself by hand. I also didn't go for the .45 or the rifle, because it was dark and I couldn't find my glasses. I don't think those are good home-defense weapons, not the least because their bullets can penetrate walls and I live in a neighborhood. My shotgun, though? It is the perfect tool for the job.
I was 16 when I first had to make the decision about killing someone. It was a mid-afternoon on a workday, when no parents were around, when I helped my girlfriend escape a horrible household in preparation for the local (inept) social services to find her a foster home. We had moved all her important belongings out of her old house into mine, a couple miles outside a small Western-Minnesota town. Her psychopathic stepfather - a big, dangerous, violent man, drove across my front yard, hopped out of his car, and began emitting a stream of the worst vitriol you can imagine while trying to beat down the front door with an aluminum bat.
I had witnessed him commit violence, she and her siblings and mother had endured years of his violence, and he was informing us that he would kill us while pounding on the door. I had no reason to disbelieve him. I was prepared to kill the man dead with my pheasant-hunting shotgun in order to defend the life of my girlfriend and myself, and the world would not have missed him.
Luckily, a neighbor saw him, and the guy wised up and left soon after.
For years afterward, I suffered emotionally about my readiness to kill, even though it would have clearly been in self-defense - and even though I never had to do it. I was ashamed by my preparedness to shoot even an evil man. However, I was very glad to have been armed, because I likely could not have defended myself against him otherwise.
Summary
We need to work on our nation's individual and overall mental health, not remove rights from good people. There are approximately two million defensive gun uses per year by law-abiding citizens; think of this translated into many tragedies averted, because very few of those result in discharge. We must retain access to the kinds of tools that can save innocent lives in situations like these. We must focus on what's really killing us rather than on how humans use guns to do the job. We must focus on why madmen go on rampages like this, and find ways to avert such crimes.
This is a topic that could go on and on and on, and I've debated it with other liberal/progressives to no conclusive end. It can be boiled down to this: Yes, guns are efficient machines people can use to kill, but so are automobiles and sugar and lack of exercise and tons of other things, and they kill a lot more people than bullets do. Even taking away all the guns (even if we could) wouldn't stop violent and evil people like the man who stabbed 20+ children and teachers in a Chinese school the other day; it would just ensure that law-abiding folks could not defend themselves against such violent criminals.
I can't speak for Republicans or Right-wingers, but these are my main reasons for steering clear of knee-jerk responses that lead to more dissolution of personal rights and freedoms. In fact, speaking as a progressive gun-owner who hasn't gone hunting since a bad experience in childhood, I think we're better off if more progressives and liberals become safe, trained gun owners. Gun ownership helps me feel safer come Big Brother or The End of the World, whether that means defending myself and those close to me or hunting for food should the supermarkets fail. Owning them helps me sleep sounder at night; true, I don't have to worry about a child finding it in my house, and that complicates safety issues for many, but careful parents can totally secure their guns. And, honestly, it's a blast to go target-shooting. If you haven't, you should try it sometime. Go with someone who can train you to do it safely, take a course, whatever, but give it a try. It's tough to discount something without experiencing it yourself.
Do we need to do something about madmen and murderers and terrorists and so forth? Of course! But I don't believe that it should cost good, law-abiding, empathic human beings their freedom.
I hope this helps deepen the debate on gun ownership going on in our country right now. Gun-rights advocates: Did I cover your arguments for the benefits of gun ownership?
Okay, that took a LOT longer than I planned. I appreciate you for reading all the way to this point! I'm going back to grading finals now, but will check comments again this evening.
Chris
Like every sane person, I was shocked and sickened by Friday's school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. I couldn't listen to the radio after a while, yet the cable-news stations were still running images of it 24/7 last I saw (while in a restaurant, of all places). I haven't had cable for decades, so it was disgusting to witness the media frenzy: People's suffering is nothing but chum in the water for the for-profit media conglomerates. Do they think people want to watch horrors like that all the time? We must, because corporations only do what raises profits, and in the media that's all about what raises ratings.
As you might have experienced yourself, when exposed to this barrage of horror, Americans immediately began calling for new rules and regulations about firearms:
"It's past time for new gun regulations!"
"We need to ban any weapon designed only for killing people!"
"No one needs an assault rifle!"
"Renew the Assault Weapons Ban!"
"We will only be safe when there are no more guns!"
In 2010, we saw 29,000 deaths from firearms in the US. Broken down, the majority (16,586) were from suicide, which I see as a valid use for a gun (another freedom we've given up); next is homicide at 10,801 - the one that worries everyone; accidental discharges kill 776; police kill about 270; the last of which is about the same as those designated "unknown," at 230 per year in the US.
So, here's an essay arguing why we must retain the right to own and bear firearms. For your convenience, I've put together a little table of contents that'll whisk you to portions of this long post (assuming LiveJournal allows internal-page linking):
Other things that contribute to human death.
Defining "assault weapons."
Argument 1: Guns Don't Kill People, People Do.
Argument 2: Hunting.
Argument 3: Bad Governments.
Argument 4: The End of the World.
Argument 5: Practicality.
Argument 6: My Experience with Bad Guys.
Summary.
Cars. They kill 34,485 people in the US per year, or about 94 people per day. Around the world, cars kill 260,000 per year - the leading cause of children's deaths worldwide. Safety rules in the US have much improved passenger and even pedestrian survival, so perhaps this could serve as a model.
Alzheimer's disease. This kills 82,435 people per year in the US, or about 226 people per day. I'm all for banning it, but good luck.
Suicide. Self-harm kills 36,909 people per year in the US, or about 101 people per day. Mental-health care, anyone?
Smoking tobacco. This toxic behavior kills 435,000 people per year in the US, or about 1,192 people per day. We've known tobacco is toxic for a long time, and the death rate used to be much worse. Why haven't we banned cigarettes?
Similarly, alcohol kills 85,000 people per year in the US, or about 233 people per day. Why is alcohol still legal? Oh, right, we tried that. It went so well, with no unintended consequences. Yet our legal system is so twisted that pot (the drug of relaxation, which causes zero deaths per year) is still illegal while booze (the drug of violence) is not.
Poison. Accidental poisonings kill 41,592 people per year in the US, or about 87 people per day. According to the CDC, "unintentional poisoning death rates have been rising steadily since 1992." But there's no uproar about removing toxic substances from our homes and environment.
Sexually transmitted disease. This (also mostly preventable) set of fun-related illness kills 20,000 people per year in the US, or about 55 people per day. If stopping STDs meaning banning casual sex (people have demanded this, too!), I say we fight that intrusion into our privacy, as well!
Obesity and being overweight (sometimes defined as "poor diet and inactivity"). This mostly preventable disease kills 365,000 people per year in the US (or 112,000, depending on study methodology), or between 300 and 1,000 people per day. Why don't we hear an outcry to reduce the growing obesity epidemic and increase health? Why doesn't the FDA outlaw "foods" that kill us? And inactivity, and so on? Heck, wheat is far more likely to kill you than a madman with a gun! So why do we still allow the food industry to poison our children with that stuff? Why do we let soda-pop manufacturers into our schools to kill our children? Why do we let them advertise and sell addictive, unregulated, sugar-and-grain substances to people below the age of 21? The best way to save people is to make these things illegal!
Better yet, let's ban Death. In the US, The Grim Reaper kills 2,507,000 per year, or about 6,868 people per day - several times as much as obesity alone. In fact, Death eventually claims everyone. Why aren't our tax dollars going into robot-body and brain-upload research so we needn't worry about physical death? Where are the protests demanding brain-backups for everyone?
Now you've gone off the rails, Chris, you're thinking. Okay, I'll stop, but you get the idea.
Back to banning guns. How about just banning "assault weapons"? In 1994, the US instituted what's called "The Assault Weapons Ban," which prohibited new ownership of any non-collectable, semi-automatic gun with a detachable magazine (or "clip") and at least two other cosmetic identifiers.
I'll go on record saying I'm fine with banning true assault weapons. By that I don't mean semi-auto rifles, pistols, shotguns, and so forth; I mean true military weapons. Let me clarify definitions: An "assault rifle" is a weapon intended for tactical assault missions. They include portable machine guns designed for sustained automatic fire in battle, and sub-machine guns designed for support roles in battle. Regular semi-automatic guns - that is, they self-reload using some of the pressure released in firing a cartridge - only fire once per trigger pull, and this is the kind of gun you or I can legally buy today. If you have a Class 3 license (dealer, collector, specially permitted), you can buy fully automatic military-grade weapons, grenade launchers, and so forth... banning these seems fine to me, but I don't see the point, because they're so rare and expensive to purchase and license as to be irrelevant in terms of public safety. Nonetheless, my point is that "assault rifle" is a misleading term, and most gun-rights advocates don't have strong feelings about outright public bans against fully automatic, military-grade weapons. Or grenade launchers, SCUD missiles, thermonuclear bombs, or so forth. Fine, outlaw 'em all, for everyone - including governments - worldwide. If we don't ban them for everyone everywhere, it won't make much of a difference, because criminals seeking them can always buy such things from illegal arms-dealers. Regardless, I don't feel that my personal freedom in desiring something like that is sufficient when balanced against the public danger in allowing such things to be available. By anyone, including governments.
Herein lies the real crux of the matter: How many of your personal freedoms and Constitutionally guaranteed rights are you willing to sacrifice in the interest of perceived public safety? Are you comfortable with the unintended consequences that might arise from giving non-human entities (such as governments) unlimited powers "to serve and obey and guard men from harm"? Because there are a lot more dangers out there that can harm us, and once we start handing over more power to power structures, once we start choosing perceived safety or even comfort over freedom and the ability to exercise our creative energies, we as a species begin to wither. Will banning all guns in the hands of individual owners cause Humankind to perish? Of course not.
But what's next? Should we ban automobiles? We ought to, because in the hands of human beings they kill a lot more Americans than guns in the hands of madmen. How about doughnuts? Sugar-and-wheat junk-foods are bigger killers than anything else. If so, then why not ban inactivity? Even a Chocolate-Frosted-Sugar-Bombs addict can maintain a certain level of health by staying physically active, so let's ban that!
I am much more concerned about the "USA Patriot Act," indefinite detentions, government programs like Guantanamo Bay prison, and the Utah Data Center than I am about getting shot by a madman with a gun.
So why am I about to argue that we should retain our right to own and bear arms in this country? It's well-known that I'm a progressive type, socially liberal, a voter for people like Carter (well, in elementary school, anyway), Clinton, and Obama. I think we spend far too much on war that could be spent developing things that could save the world; I believe "the war on terror" is rooted in religionism, racism, nationalism, and corporate interests, because it has not only failed to stop terrorism, but actually increased it (does violence ever cure violent thoughts? how can you kill a meme?); I think insurance should be nonprofit; I think we should spend the money wasted on the expanding mental-health services and addiction treatment would be far more beneficial than imprisoning drug-users; I think we should vastly expand support for public education; and so on. Get the idea?
I'm also a proponent of personal freedom, because without freedom what do we really have? Without the freedom to create, we cannot grow. Without freedom, we are nothing. Anyhow, my arguments for retaining gun-ownership rights in the US:
Argument 1: Guns Don't Kill People, People Do
You've heard this one before, far too often, I'm sure, as the NRA lives and breathes this line. But it's true: Guns are not the problem; rather, something's sick in our nation to give rise to the gun violence we see. Other industrialized, gun-totin' nations don't have nearly our gun-crime rate. Something at the very root of this nation is what's broken, and part of it is that the Left and Right do not speak the same language, and because we all now live in "internet bubbles" that exclude the other side's opinions, all we see is what we already know and want to see. I wonder if this post will even be seen by eyes that need to see it.
Car-bombs are much more effective as tools for mass-murder than guns. Remember the Oklahoma City bombing? One Right-wing lunatic (with assistance from another) used a fertilizer bomb to kill 168 people, including 19 children under the age of six, and injured more than 680 others. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a 16-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. Or last year's attack in Oslo by a Norwegian racist, who killed eight people and injured at least 209 others - despite the bomber selecting a day and time when very few would be in the vicinity of the blast. If we want to stop mass-murder, we should outlaw car-bombs and arson (which kills hundreds in the US each year). Oh, wait.
Argument 2: Hunting
A lot of good - even progressive - people go hunting because they feel it's the most-humane way to acquire healthy meat, and a lot of others because they can't afford organic meat. Also, the deer population (for example) needs some kind of check since we've killed off our top predators. Do I want to see people hunting rare animals? Of course not; we should totally enact and enforce laws that prevent crimes. But it makes complete sense for people to be able to own guns for legal hunting purposes. Do hunters actually use semi-auto rifles like AK-47s and AR-15s to go hunting? Sure they do; in fact, the large-capacity clips are very popular among people like boar hunters.
Argument 3: Bad Governments
I'm continually stunned and appalled by the conservative right-wing, which is perfectly happy granting enormous powers to the government when it suits their agendas ("Damn furriners! Mooslim ter'rists! Amurika, fuk ya!"), then shouting about how things like the Affordable Care Act are the End of the World. I hate being conflated with these people. These are the same types who also paste on bumper stickers to inform us, "You'll have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hand." Irony, much?
Even so, I think the main reason they're okay with letting the government erode most of our rights "during wartime" (even during an eternal war against an amorphous and unkillable mental construct) and grow massively in regards to "homeland security" while being totally unwilling to allow the same government to take away their right to bear arms (or other right-wing-pleasing rights) is that they feel they could mount an insurgency against said government should it grow too powerful. Because they let it grow so powerful. Irony, that.
True, if every red-blooded American decided to stand up against tyranny tomorrow with force of arms, most would perish, because we've allowed the government to build and stockpile horrific weapons of war combined with intrusive surveillance technologies. But such insurgencies always win, in the long run: In Afghanistan they drove out the Soviets and will soon drive us out; in Libya they defeated Muammar Gaddafi; and they're finally making headway in Syria. This argument is why the "Founding Fathers" of the US made sure we enjoyed the right to own and bear arms, because they remembered what it was like to live under tyranny. This is why I feel it's important to retain our right to semi-auto firearms, including those that use large magazines - bad guys can get them, regardless, but could we do so if our government were to suddenly veer deeply into tyrannical territory?
Argument 4: The End of the World
Many of these types also believe that we stand at the brink of Armageddon. And they're probably right, though for the wrong reasons. Climate change, overpopulation, resource depletion, loose bioweapons, and so forth are infinitely more likely to bring about the end of advanced civilization than gods descending from On High... hell, the Zombie Apocalypse is more likely than that! But we're closer to the end of the world than ever, and those who are armed and part of a healthy community are much more likely to survive than unarmed folk.
So they believe gun ownership is vital to freedom and survival, and I think they're not wrong on that score. Same with cars: I can foresee a day when a massively more powerful government (say, like California's) might decide No more internal-combustion engines! And they might have good reason for this. But imagine the outcry. Not going to happen, at least not until you start seeing so many electric cars out there that they're ending up as 16-year-olds' first vehicles in places like Iowa. (Yes, I know electrics still get most of their power from fossil fuel in the form of coal.)
Argument 5: Practicality
Talk of banning guns is just impractical. The Soviet Union manufactured so many millions of AK-47s that they will never disappear. Published records of registered firearms in the USA suggest that there's about one for every man, woman, and child here... and that's only registered firearms. Plus, there are many times more in the world at large. Guns don't become unusable unless they're not maintained, and gun owners (as opposed to criminals) take good care of them. So if we banned guns tomorrow, they'd still be around for, oh, forever. And they'd only be owned by those willing to keep them despite the law. I bet that most gun owners would keep them, anyway, and they'd start private machining groups to build and repair them for one another, and soon there'd be so many out there - and dangerous ones, to boot, that might explode - that we'd be worse than ever.
Unlike pedophile priests, guns will never die unless poorly maintained. The only guns we can collect (as buybacks - the most likely method - or enforced turn-ins) are those owned by law-abiding folks who will not fight back against tyranny. The criminals won't turn them in... but you can argue theirs won't last as long because they're criminals. We try to stop criminals, like pedophiles, through a combination of moral teaching, laws, and the criminal justice system. But they still crop up. The good part, if you can see it that way, is that they eventually grow old and die (or get caught and, thus, stop).
Let's look at using those same tools for guns. Moral teaching: Check. Gun-owner parents pass on gun safety and ethics. Laws: Check, though we can clearly increase waiting periods, have standard background checks, and so forth that we don't have now. Criminal justice system: Check. However, people who are going to engage in gun crimes are just as unaffected by this as the people who are going to engage in any crime. Pedophile priests, murderers, and so forth do what they do despite laws. Criminals who use guns in the commission of crimes do that despite gun laws. It's the people who are the problem in both cases. Eliminating, say, a realistic 10% of guns in the USA (good luck removing more of them) would do nothing to affect the criminals who use them in crimes.
I understand the argument that having fewer guns in the world would mean fewer cheap guns for everyone, including criminals, but that argument is akin to saying we should restrict the sale of diamonds in order to cut the rate of diamond-theft. I suspect doing so would only increase diamond thefts, because now they would be worth much more if they weren't freely available. Solves nothing. The only way to stop shootings - most of which are crimes of passion - is to confiscate every gun in the world; heck, you'd also have to ban police from carrying, because they shoot more people than mass-murderers do. I don't want to live in a world that bans ownership of things some people don't like, because some people don't like a lot of things I find valuable or important.
Argument 6: My Experience with Bad Guys
A few months ago, a serial robber tried breaking into my home. He got so far as to partially open and reach around my sliding-glass door in an apparent effort to find what was preventing it from opening further, even after I turned on the overhead light. Considering how many robberies (some violent) have been going on around here, I was really glad to be armed. (And even gladder that I didn't have to use the shotgun on the man.) The police arrived a few minutes later. If the guy had succeeded in breaking in, the cops wouldn't have been there in time. This took place after 4:00am, so I was bleary-eyed and not ready to defend myself by hand. I also didn't go for the .45 or the rifle, because it was dark and I couldn't find my glasses. I don't think those are good home-defense weapons, not the least because their bullets can penetrate walls and I live in a neighborhood. My shotgun, though? It is the perfect tool for the job.
I was 16 when I first had to make the decision about killing someone. It was a mid-afternoon on a workday, when no parents were around, when I helped my girlfriend escape a horrible household in preparation for the local (inept) social services to find her a foster home. We had moved all her important belongings out of her old house into mine, a couple miles outside a small Western-Minnesota town. Her psychopathic stepfather - a big, dangerous, violent man, drove across my front yard, hopped out of his car, and began emitting a stream of the worst vitriol you can imagine while trying to beat down the front door with an aluminum bat.
I had witnessed him commit violence, she and her siblings and mother had endured years of his violence, and he was informing us that he would kill us while pounding on the door. I had no reason to disbelieve him. I was prepared to kill the man dead with my pheasant-hunting shotgun in order to defend the life of my girlfriend and myself, and the world would not have missed him.
Luckily, a neighbor saw him, and the guy wised up and left soon after.
For years afterward, I suffered emotionally about my readiness to kill, even though it would have clearly been in self-defense - and even though I never had to do it. I was ashamed by my preparedness to shoot even an evil man. However, I was very glad to have been armed, because I likely could not have defended myself against him otherwise.
Summary
We need to work on our nation's individual and overall mental health, not remove rights from good people. There are approximately two million defensive gun uses per year by law-abiding citizens; think of this translated into many tragedies averted, because very few of those result in discharge. We must retain access to the kinds of tools that can save innocent lives in situations like these. We must focus on what's really killing us rather than on how humans use guns to do the job. We must focus on why madmen go on rampages like this, and find ways to avert such crimes.
This is a topic that could go on and on and on, and I've debated it with other liberal/progressives to no conclusive end. It can be boiled down to this: Yes, guns are efficient machines people can use to kill, but so are automobiles and sugar and lack of exercise and tons of other things, and they kill a lot more people than bullets do. Even taking away all the guns (even if we could) wouldn't stop violent and evil people like the man who stabbed 20+ children and teachers in a Chinese school the other day; it would just ensure that law-abiding folks could not defend themselves against such violent criminals.
I can't speak for Republicans or Right-wingers, but these are my main reasons for steering clear of knee-jerk responses that lead to more dissolution of personal rights and freedoms. In fact, speaking as a progressive gun-owner who hasn't gone hunting since a bad experience in childhood, I think we're better off if more progressives and liberals become safe, trained gun owners. Gun ownership helps me feel safer come Big Brother or The End of the World, whether that means defending myself and those close to me or hunting for food should the supermarkets fail. Owning them helps me sleep sounder at night; true, I don't have to worry about a child finding it in my house, and that complicates safety issues for many, but careful parents can totally secure their guns. And, honestly, it's a blast to go target-shooting. If you haven't, you should try it sometime. Go with someone who can train you to do it safely, take a course, whatever, but give it a try. It's tough to discount something without experiencing it yourself.
Do we need to do something about madmen and murderers and terrorists and so forth? Of course! But I don't believe that it should cost good, law-abiding, empathic human beings their freedom.
I hope this helps deepen the debate on gun ownership going on in our country right now. Gun-rights advocates: Did I cover your arguments for the benefits of gun ownership?
Okay, that took a LOT longer than I planned. I appreciate you for reading all the way to this point! I'm going back to grading finals now, but will check comments again this evening.
Chris
December 13, 2012
Astro-Porn of the Day: Double Meteor Shower Tonight!
The Geminids peak tonight! Considering it's a New Moon (no stray light from the Moon, as it's on the Sun side of the Earth), skies will be extra-dark, so you'll be able to see more and fainter meteors. Things get fiercest after midnight. Get out there!
Click the image to see photographer Randy Halverson's post.
Oh, and coincidentally, there's a brand-new meteor shower making its first appearance tonight! This one doesn't yet appear to be named, but it'll show up between Pisces and Pegasus. This one will be better to catch earlier in the evening, once it's fully dark, because those constellations set earlier.
Ooh, and here's a neat NASA video that talks about the unique nature of the Geminids:
Want an all-night meteor-stravaganza? Head out after dark and stay out until 3am or so! I suggest a nice chaise lounge, blankets, booze, and friends. If you also bring a pair of binoculars, they can provide lovely views of other astro-objects for variety. Here's a lovely observing guide to help plan. I find the best way to watch a meteor shower is with friends: You can point out meteors they don't want to miss, and you have a great excuse to talk for hours.
Enjoy!
Chris
Click the image to see photographer Randy Halverson's post.
Oh, and coincidentally, there's a brand-new meteor shower making its first appearance tonight! This one doesn't yet appear to be named, but it'll show up between Pisces and Pegasus. This one will be better to catch earlier in the evening, once it's fully dark, because those constellations set earlier.
Ooh, and here's a neat NASA video that talks about the unique nature of the Geminids:
Want an all-night meteor-stravaganza? Head out after dark and stay out until 3am or so! I suggest a nice chaise lounge, blankets, booze, and friends. If you also bring a pair of binoculars, they can provide lovely views of other astro-objects for variety. Here's a lovely observing guide to help plan. I find the best way to watch a meteor shower is with friends: You can point out meteors they don't want to miss, and you have a great excuse to talk for hours.
Enjoy!
Chris
December 12, 2012
Solar telescope is up and running!
I finally found a little time to finish mounting my "new" Solarmax hydrogen-alpha telescope onto an antique mount, so I can actually use it. And WOW does it work great! Here it is, on an old German equatorial mount that I found abandoned on the side of the road last summer (Seriously. It used to hold a 4" Newtonian reflector. Anyone want an old, barely usable telescope?):
The tripod is cheap and old (read: WOBBLY), and the mount's slow-motion worm-gears are stiff, but it works fine temporarily for low-power Sun-watching. I'll get myself a proper clock-drive mount on a sturdy tripod soon, but in the mean time, the Sun is available for viewing. WOWEE, did I mention it looks great through this little dedicated solar 'scope? This next photo gives you an idea of how the Sun looks through this scope (the photographer used the same instrument); if anything, it looks even more dramatic today, with filaments stretching off into space at least twice as far:
Click the image to see Mark Hellweg's Flickr page.
Note the string-like filaments and prominences along the limb of the Sun's globe, the granulation of the surface, and what appear to be "cracks" (magnetic disturbances).
When looking at the Sun, it's useful to get an idea of scale. How big are those "tiny" prominences? How miniscule are those grains of solar-stuff? Here's the Earth 'shopped near a small flare, to lend some perspective:
Click the image to see this astro-blog.
A feature of this telescope that I thought was just a marketing ploy turns out to be amazing: It's "tunable," in that you can turn a little dial between the front H-a filter and the second H-a filter, and this shifts the spectrum of light passing through to the eyepiece a little toward the red end or a little toward the blue end of the H-a band of light. What this does is alter what's most visible, much the way other Doppler effects work: Toward the blue (I know, it's ALL red, but the less-red end of the light-frequency) end, features moving toward the Earth are more visible; toward the far-red, features moving away from the Earth are more visible. I found that most prominences suddenly LEAPED INTO VIEW about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way tuned, suggesting that most of today's liveliness is taking place on the very edge or slightly toward us. Makes sense, considering we can't see the other side of the Sun's globe... and if we could, it would be the same deal over there, of course!
Here's someone having fun naming prominences (you'll have to follow the link to the original to see the full-size image in order to read the sometimes whimsical names):
Click the image to see the big image.
As I was watching the Sun, my neighbor Bret stopped by his house while running errands, saw me, and strolled over for a view. Even he was able to see these details - surprising, because getting a good look through a telescope pointed at the Sun requires practice. You need to leave open both eyes while covering the one you're not using and shading the other... and focusing at the same time with your third hand. And keeping the Sun centered in the eyepiece by turning the mount's slow-motion equatorial control with your fourth hand. Wonderful to be able to share my first time!
Okay, now I'm back to work. Finals are pouring in, y'know.
Chris
The tripod is cheap and old (read: WOBBLY), and the mount's slow-motion worm-gears are stiff, but it works fine temporarily for low-power Sun-watching. I'll get myself a proper clock-drive mount on a sturdy tripod soon, but in the mean time, the Sun is available for viewing. WOWEE, did I mention it looks great through this little dedicated solar 'scope? This next photo gives you an idea of how the Sun looks through this scope (the photographer used the same instrument); if anything, it looks even more dramatic today, with filaments stretching off into space at least twice as far:
Click the image to see Mark Hellweg's Flickr page.
Note the string-like filaments and prominences along the limb of the Sun's globe, the granulation of the surface, and what appear to be "cracks" (magnetic disturbances).
When looking at the Sun, it's useful to get an idea of scale. How big are those "tiny" prominences? How miniscule are those grains of solar-stuff? Here's the Earth 'shopped near a small flare, to lend some perspective:
Click the image to see this astro-blog.
A feature of this telescope that I thought was just a marketing ploy turns out to be amazing: It's "tunable," in that you can turn a little dial between the front H-a filter and the second H-a filter, and this shifts the spectrum of light passing through to the eyepiece a little toward the red end or a little toward the blue end of the H-a band of light. What this does is alter what's most visible, much the way other Doppler effects work: Toward the blue (I know, it's ALL red, but the less-red end of the light-frequency) end, features moving toward the Earth are more visible; toward the far-red, features moving away from the Earth are more visible. I found that most prominences suddenly LEAPED INTO VIEW about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way tuned, suggesting that most of today's liveliness is taking place on the very edge or slightly toward us. Makes sense, considering we can't see the other side of the Sun's globe... and if we could, it would be the same deal over there, of course!
Here's someone having fun naming prominences (you'll have to follow the link to the original to see the full-size image in order to read the sometimes whimsical names):
Click the image to see the big image.
As I was watching the Sun, my neighbor Bret stopped by his house while running errands, saw me, and strolled over for a view. Even he was able to see these details - surprising, because getting a good look through a telescope pointed at the Sun requires practice. You need to leave open both eyes while covering the one you're not using and shading the other... and focusing at the same time with your third hand. And keeping the Sun centered in the eyepiece by turning the mount's slow-motion equatorial control with your fourth hand. Wonderful to be able to share my first time!
Okay, now I'm back to work. Finals are pouring in, y'know.
Chris
Happy 12:12:12 on 12/12/12!
That's the last time we'll ever be able to say such a thing....
Chris
Chris
December 10, 2012
Astro-Porn and More: Hadley Rille Books celebration in video; DOOMSDAY asteroid approacheth.
My publisher, Hadley Rille Books, just celebrated seven years in the business, and to commemorate the achievement made this little video. Congratulations, Eric T Reynolds (lj user="ericreynolds") and HRB!
So what does "Hadley Rille" mean? It's a feature on the Moon near where Apollo 15 landed.
Here's a shot from orbit:
And here's one just before the astronauts scooted over aboard their rover:
Click the images to see the original Apollo 15 mission transcripts.
In other exciting astro-news, asteroid 4179 Toutatis is en route to its Doomsday rendezvous with Earth - less than two days away now!
Click the image to see the Wiki page about this Asteroid of Dooooom.
Irregularly shaped at almost 3 miles by 2-1/2 miles by 2 miles, this bad boy is about the size of a mountain. Approximately as massive, too: It weighs more than 5 trillion kilograms (3 trillion-ish pounds), about the same mass that has fallen onto the Earth since it formed. When it was (re)discovered in 1989, the French astronomer named it "Toutatis," an ancient Gaulish (Gaulian?) god best known from the French Asterix le Gaulois ("Asterix the Gaul") comics, wherein the village chief often appeals to Toutatis to keep the sky from falling. Amazingly, it works! The sky never falls. And yet, now Toutatis the Doom-Asteroid approacheth....
Does this mean those who pray for the coming Mayan-guaranteed Doomsday are about to get their wish? Pshaw. Sorry to burst their bubble, but it'll pass a long way past the Moon's orbit this time around.
Still, the combination of "MAYAN DOOOOOM!" and this puppy should focus extra attention on the need to track and prepare for defending against Earth-skimming asteroids, because this one could well whack us at some point in the future, and that would be bad. It passes us every four years, sometimes closer than others... and every time it does, its orbit changes. Jupiter's gravity also messes with its orbit, so there's a chance that one day it'll rip a hole through the Earth's crust - a better chance than you'll be hit by lightning, killed by a terrorist act, or [insert your favorite cause of unnatural death].
Want to watch the asteroid through your own telescope? Sky & Telescope put together this handy viewing guide, with maps and everything. Fascinatingly, it'll blast past Earth so fast that you'll be able to watch it creep across the sky at 20 arcseconds per minute - fast enough to see its motion in real time! Due to the Earth's rotation on its axis, the sky appears to move about 15 degrees per hour, or about 15 arcseconds per second. So the asteroid will whip past even faster than the stars move across the sky. In a telescope, that'll be QUICK!
However, it'll be a challenge to find and track, of course, with all that motion. Want to watch the encounter via some Earth-based robotic telescopes? You can follow along at Slooh.com's live coverage starting in about 26 hours. Also, the Chinese Moon-orbiting spacecraft, Chang'E 2, will pass within 200 miles of the asteroid, but few expect it to provide good images because its camera configuration is only really suited for taking pictures while carefully orbiting, say, THE MOON. (Hm, the Moon keeps appearing in this post... a Mayan conspiracy, perhaps?) The Moon remains steady beneath the orbiter - unlike 4179 Toutatis, rocketing past at 11 kilometers per second (24,000 mph).
Short answer: We'll survive... THIS TIME *cue scary organ music*
Chris
So what does "Hadley Rille" mean? It's a feature on the Moon near where Apollo 15 landed.
Here's a shot from orbit:
And here's one just before the astronauts scooted over aboard their rover:
Click the images to see the original Apollo 15 mission transcripts.
In other exciting astro-news, asteroid 4179 Toutatis is en route to its Doomsday rendezvous with Earth - less than two days away now!
Click the image to see the Wiki page about this Asteroid of Dooooom.
Irregularly shaped at almost 3 miles by 2-1/2 miles by 2 miles, this bad boy is about the size of a mountain. Approximately as massive, too: It weighs more than 5 trillion kilograms (3 trillion-ish pounds), about the same mass that has fallen onto the Earth since it formed. When it was (re)discovered in 1989, the French astronomer named it "Toutatis," an ancient Gaulish (Gaulian?) god best known from the French Asterix le Gaulois ("Asterix the Gaul") comics, wherein the village chief often appeals to Toutatis to keep the sky from falling. Amazingly, it works! The sky never falls. And yet, now Toutatis the Doom-Asteroid approacheth....
Does this mean those who pray for the coming Mayan-guaranteed Doomsday are about to get their wish? Pshaw. Sorry to burst their bubble, but it'll pass a long way past the Moon's orbit this time around.
Still, the combination of "MAYAN DOOOOOM!" and this puppy should focus extra attention on the need to track and prepare for defending against Earth-skimming asteroids, because this one could well whack us at some point in the future, and that would be bad. It passes us every four years, sometimes closer than others... and every time it does, its orbit changes. Jupiter's gravity also messes with its orbit, so there's a chance that one day it'll rip a hole through the Earth's crust - a better chance than you'll be hit by lightning, killed by a terrorist act, or [insert your favorite cause of unnatural death].
Want to watch the asteroid through your own telescope? Sky & Telescope put together this handy viewing guide, with maps and everything. Fascinatingly, it'll blast past Earth so fast that you'll be able to watch it creep across the sky at 20 arcseconds per minute - fast enough to see its motion in real time! Due to the Earth's rotation on its axis, the sky appears to move about 15 degrees per hour, or about 15 arcseconds per second. So the asteroid will whip past even faster than the stars move across the sky. In a telescope, that'll be QUICK!
However, it'll be a challenge to find and track, of course, with all that motion. Want to watch the encounter via some Earth-based robotic telescopes? You can follow along at Slooh.com's live coverage starting in about 26 hours. Also, the Chinese Moon-orbiting spacecraft, Chang'E 2, will pass within 200 miles of the asteroid, but few expect it to provide good images because its camera configuration is only really suited for taking pictures while carefully orbiting, say, THE MOON. (Hm, the Moon keeps appearing in this post... a Mayan conspiracy, perhaps?) The Moon remains steady beneath the orbiter - unlike 4179 Toutatis, rocketing past at 11 kilometers per second (24,000 mph).
Short answer: We'll survive... THIS TIME *cue scary organ music*
Chris
December 9, 2012
Speculative fiction and authorial laziness. Also stupid people.
Just saw this fantastic response by author Scott Lynch to small-mindedness in speculative fiction.
I've been talking with several people lately about this very issue, ever since
chernobylred
got me started thinking. She gave up on Game of Thrones right away upon realizing that, socio-politically, women have been suffering the same sexism there in that fantasty world as they have in our world. (She also has a good discussion going on over at her LJ on this topic.)
Fantasy so often fails to try new things because "that's not the way they were." BULLPOOP. It's FANTASY, people, which means IT'S NOT AND NEVER WAS REAL. Why re-create the same sexist, racist, religionist, etcetera-ist stereotypes from our own history when you can create fresh, vivid, DIFFERENT worlds? It just reveals the authors' own imagination limitations. In fact, if you're writing any form of speculative fiction, you have no excuse for limiting yourself to the way things were or the way things are; it's SPECULATIVE, which means you can - and ought to, if you want to write something that stands out - do things like invent futures where elections aren't affected by someone's genetic heritage, or whether they belong to a religion, or how many times they've been married, or if they're even fully organic after the shipwreck. Heck, that's the whole point: to speculate on possibilities, to examine what it means to be human encountering change.
PS: Also, FRAK the closed-minded people who say "Men can't write about the women's experience." This author, who at least appears to be a man, isn't writing about the women's experience, but a woman's experience. Which is another way to not just write stereotypes. Bravo.
PPS: If you haven't yet, be sure to read this Tor.com article: Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That.
PPPS: Here's a great discussion about "How to be a fan of problematic things" (with the subtext of "without being an a-hole").
What are your thoughts on this? Can you accept the problematic, sigh a bit, then go on to enjoy a work? Or does it stop you from being able to read it?
Chris
I've been talking with several people lately about this very issue, ever since
chernobylred
got me started thinking. She gave up on Game of Thrones right away upon realizing that, socio-politically, women have been suffering the same sexism there in that fantasty world as they have in our world. (She also has a good discussion going on over at her LJ on this topic.)Fantasy so often fails to try new things because "that's not the way they were." BULLPOOP. It's FANTASY, people, which means IT'S NOT AND NEVER WAS REAL. Why re-create the same sexist, racist, religionist, etcetera-ist stereotypes from our own history when you can create fresh, vivid, DIFFERENT worlds? It just reveals the authors' own imagination limitations. In fact, if you're writing any form of speculative fiction, you have no excuse for limiting yourself to the way things were or the way things are; it's SPECULATIVE, which means you can - and ought to, if you want to write something that stands out - do things like invent futures where elections aren't affected by someone's genetic heritage, or whether they belong to a religion, or how many times they've been married, or if they're even fully organic after the shipwreck. Heck, that's the whole point: to speculate on possibilities, to examine what it means to be human encountering change.
PS: Also, FRAK the closed-minded people who say "Men can't write about the women's experience." This author, who at least appears to be a man, isn't writing about the women's experience, but a woman's experience. Which is another way to not just write stereotypes. Bravo.
PPS: If you haven't yet, be sure to read this Tor.com article: Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That.
PPPS: Here's a great discussion about "How to be a fan of problematic things" (with the subtext of "without being an a-hole").
What are your thoughts on this? Can you accept the problematic, sigh a bit, then go on to enjoy a work? Or does it stop you from being able to read it?
Chris
December 4, 2012
Astro-Porn of the Day: Hi-Def Vid of Curiosity Landing on Mars!
That is so full of fantastic... you've surely seen a bunch of descent and landing photos (which this person used), and some animations from NASA, but this video created by Bard Canning is perfect!
Here's how Canning describes it: "Working frame-by-frame, it took me four weeks to produce this video. It was a labor of love. You can support my efforts with a donation or just let me know that you enjoyed it. Ultra-resolution, smooth-motion, detail-enhanced, color-corrected, interpolated from the original 4 frames per second to 30 frames per second. This video plays real-time at the speed that Curiosity descended to the surface of Mars on August 6, 2012."
Enjoy!
Chris
Here's how Canning describes it: "Working frame-by-frame, it took me four weeks to produce this video. It was a labor of love. You can support my efforts with a donation or just let me know that you enjoyed it. Ultra-resolution, smooth-motion, detail-enhanced, color-corrected, interpolated from the original 4 frames per second to 30 frames per second. This video plays real-time at the speed that Curiosity descended to the surface of Mars on August 6, 2012."
Enjoy!
Chris
November 30, 2012
Astro-Porn of the Day: WOW Saturn storm! Also: Jupiter is at its best.
Holy Superstorm, Batman! Check out what's churning at Saturn's north pole:
Click the image to see the Cassini page.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this image yesterday from about 360,000 kilometers away. The new photo shows what's going on inside this hexagon-shaped cloud structure that stretches 25,000 kilometers across Saturn's North Pole:
Click the image to see the Cassini page.
Because Saturn's North Pole has emerged from its 15-year-long winter, when sunlight does not fall on the pole, Cassini can now study this vast storm - about the size of Earth - at the hexagon's core. Astronomers think these storms form in the same way as hurricanes, with warm, moist air rising from lower cloud layers. The storms might be permanent, or could come and go with the seasons.
Cassini previously observed Saturn's south pole before in 2006, where a storm two-thirds as wide as Earth was raging. That vortex was the first place in the solar system other than Earth where astronomers saw eye-wall clouds, a typical feature of hurricanes, where a bank of clouds towers above the central pit.
In other astro-news, have you been watching Jupiter and the Moon dancing on the Eastern horizon after sunset? Two days ago, they were within a Moon's-width apart, the two brightest nighttime objects in the sky! If you have a telescope, now's the time to check out the giant planet, which is giving us its best views of the year over the next few days. If you want to watch the Great Red Spot transit across Jupiter's stormy bands, check out this handy tool by Sky & Telescope. This is what it looked like when Voyager 1 zipped past about 10 million kilometers from the planet in 1979:
Click the image to see the NASA page.
Chris
Click the image to see the Cassini page.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft took this image yesterday from about 360,000 kilometers away. The new photo shows what's going on inside this hexagon-shaped cloud structure that stretches 25,000 kilometers across Saturn's North Pole:
Click the image to see the Cassini page.
Because Saturn's North Pole has emerged from its 15-year-long winter, when sunlight does not fall on the pole, Cassini can now study this vast storm - about the size of Earth - at the hexagon's core. Astronomers think these storms form in the same way as hurricanes, with warm, moist air rising from lower cloud layers. The storms might be permanent, or could come and go with the seasons.
Cassini previously observed Saturn's south pole before in 2006, where a storm two-thirds as wide as Earth was raging. That vortex was the first place in the solar system other than Earth where astronomers saw eye-wall clouds, a typical feature of hurricanes, where a bank of clouds towers above the central pit.
In other astro-news, have you been watching Jupiter and the Moon dancing on the Eastern horizon after sunset? Two days ago, they were within a Moon's-width apart, the two brightest nighttime objects in the sky! If you have a telescope, now's the time to check out the giant planet, which is giving us its best views of the year over the next few days. If you want to watch the Great Red Spot transit across Jupiter's stormy bands, check out this handy tool by Sky & Telescope. This is what it looked like when Voyager 1 zipped past about 10 million kilometers from the planet in 1979:
Click the image to see the NASA page.
Chris
November 29, 2012
Squirrels. Cars. Books!
First up, I want to tell everyone that Summit Racing is awesome. I spent a couple days last week working on removing the rear suspension setup for the Chevelle in preparation for installing modern, awesome-handling parts. Full write-up with photos here. Summmit comes in because I noticed I was missing something. See this photo:
You probably noticed that there's no new lower control-arm in this photo side-by-side with the old one, like with the upper control-arm and the cross-brace. You'd be right. I also noticed this. But not right away; instead, I only noticed when I was setting up this shot, six months after ordering the parts... and failing to notice back then. Oops. A few emails and some calls with Summit Racing resolved the problem, which was that the manufacturer simply failed to ship them! Now they're on their way, and Summit is even reimbursing me the $40 price-drop since when I ordered the parts. I love Summit! Not only do they have great selection and prices, but their customer service rocks.
Next: You know I love my squirrels. Here's Spot, one of my "outdoor pets," a charming and clever fellow who has taught me to feed him whenever he's hungry. How? By getting my attention like this. He's also fearless, and when I toss out a cup of seed, all the other squirrels run away. But not Spot. He gets dibs, so intelligence DOES equal higher survival fitness, at least in my back yard....
Finally, today is Hadley Rille Books' 7th anniversary, and they're celebrating with 99¢ Kindle and Nook e-books for a limited time! Hadley Rille's specialties are SF, fantasy, and archeological - check 'em out!
It's also publisher Eric Reynolds' birthday. As a gift to himself in 2005, he fulfilled a long-time dream of starting a publishing company with Golden Age SF: Tales of a Bygone Future , a fantastic collection of short fiction - and it's still available. This is one of the things I love about this publisher in particular but the small press in general: As long as there's still demand, the books remain in print. Because Eric is such a great guy and Hadley Rille is such a cool business, I went with him to publish my first novel - and several short stories in a variety of collections.
Not into e-books? Well, Hadley Rille offers even more great novels and collections in both trade-paper and hardcover. Books make great gifts. Just sayin'. For example:
Click the cover to see more about the book, links, sample chapters, and more.
Now it's back to grading. I seem to say that a lot. Friday will be an all-day The Galactic Adventures of Jack & Stella write-a-thon, and Saturday is slated for working on the Chevelle, at least for part of the day, and then maybe going to see the new "Life of Pi."
Chris
You probably noticed that there's no new lower control-arm in this photo side-by-side with the old one, like with the upper control-arm and the cross-brace. You'd be right. I also noticed this. But not right away; instead, I only noticed when I was setting up this shot, six months after ordering the parts... and failing to notice back then. Oops. A few emails and some calls with Summit Racing resolved the problem, which was that the manufacturer simply failed to ship them! Now they're on their way, and Summit is even reimbursing me the $40 price-drop since when I ordered the parts. I love Summit! Not only do they have great selection and prices, but their customer service rocks.
Next: You know I love my squirrels. Here's Spot, one of my "outdoor pets," a charming and clever fellow who has taught me to feed him whenever he's hungry. How? By getting my attention like this. He's also fearless, and when I toss out a cup of seed, all the other squirrels run away. But not Spot. He gets dibs, so intelligence DOES equal higher survival fitness, at least in my back yard....
Finally, today is Hadley Rille Books' 7th anniversary, and they're celebrating with 99¢ Kindle and Nook e-books for a limited time! Hadley Rille's specialties are SF, fantasy, and archeological - check 'em out!
It's also publisher Eric Reynolds' birthday. As a gift to himself in 2005, he fulfilled a long-time dream of starting a publishing company with Golden Age SF: Tales of a Bygone Future , a fantastic collection of short fiction - and it's still available. This is one of the things I love about this publisher in particular but the small press in general: As long as there's still demand, the books remain in print. Because Eric is such a great guy and Hadley Rille is such a cool business, I went with him to publish my first novel - and several short stories in a variety of collections.
Not into e-books? Well, Hadley Rille offers even more great novels and collections in both trade-paper and hardcover. Books make great gifts. Just sayin'. For example:
Click the cover to see more about the book, links, sample chapters, and more.
Now it's back to grading. I seem to say that a lot. Friday will be an all-day The Galactic Adventures of Jack & Stella write-a-thon, and Saturday is slated for working on the Chevelle, at least for part of the day, and then maybe going to see the new "Life of Pi."
Chris
November 27, 2012
Vote for the best 20th & 21st century SF&F. BONUS: Lots of SF/F reading lists.
If you love science fiction and fantasy of any length, now's your chance to make your favorite works known! For the next few days (through the end of November),
Locus Online
is operating a survey of the best SF/F of the past 112 years on their website.
List what you consider the best novels in two separate categories - SF and fantasy - and combined SF/F in the novella, novelette, and short-story length. (Lots of horror in there, too; you pick where you think it best fits.) The 20th century gets 10 ranked positions for each category, and 21st century fiction gets five; I assume this heavier weight-per-year (100 gets 10 slots, 12 gets 5 slots) is because we better remember recent work?
Anyhow, GO DO IT! Here are a ton of resources to refresh your memory (I certainly needed them):
The Center for the Study of Science Fiction's Basic Science Fiction Library: Mostly lists novels, but also contains some short fiction. This list is ordered by author, spanning all time. Includes publication dates and even links where we could find them! If you see any glaring omissions, please let me know and we'll consult about adding those works.
The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best SF novel winners list: Goes back to 1972 novels (that is, the first Campbell Award-winning novel in 1973 was for a novel published in 1972).
The John W. Campbell Memorial Award finalist list: Goes back to 2003. I recommend looking through the finalist lists of the major awards, because what you might consider the best works don't always win! True for me, anyway.
Locus put together this fantastic list of 20th century SF/F novels: They mix SF and fantasy, so you'll have to decide on some of these where a novel belongs. How did they get on this list? "The lists include, first, every title that's won a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, British Fantasy, British SF, Campbell, Sturgeon, Clarke, International Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, or Bram Stoker award [except for first novels categories]. Second, every title that has been a nominee or runner-up for any two of these awards is included. Third, for 20th century novels, every title included in four or more reference works or polls, such as David Pringle's Science Fiction: 100 Best Novels, Neil Barron's Anatomy of Wonder, NPR's recent poll, and some 50 other works and polls compiled as part of the sfadb.com project, is included. For 21st century novels, since relatively few such references are recent enough to cover that period, the bar is lowered to inclusion in any one such work. The bars are set so that the number of titles added to the lists from such references is about the same as the number of titles included due to award standings."
The Locus list of 21st century SF/F novels: See above notes for details.
NPR's crowd-sourced Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books of all time.
The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short SF: Goes back to 1986 stories of all length shorter than the novel (that is, the first Sturgeon Award-winner in 1987 was for a short work published in 1986).
The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist list: Goes back to 2003.
The Locus list of 20th century short SF/F. How did they get on this list? "For short fiction, the supplement to awards data is the number of anthology and collection reprints a story has accumulated, based on data compiled in the Locus Index to Science Fiction by William Contento. For 20th century stories, the bar is more than 8; for 21st century stories, the bar is more than 2, though the Index is not complete through 2010 and some recent titles have been added based on manual inspection of various year's-best anthologies. Again, the bars are set so that the final lists are roughly divided between titles via award references and titles via reprint references. For works not on the short fiction lists, there are word-count guidelines on the 20th century short fiction page."
The Locus list of 21st century short SF/F: See above for details. Also note that the letters in the publication-date info for suggestions of which category to use: ss is for short story, nvt is for novelette, nva is for novella.
The Nebula Award for best SF/F of the year list: This is Wikipedia's novel list, but also links to all the other lengths. (The official SFWA Nebula Award site only goes back to 2000.)
Hugo Award for best SF/F of the year list: Links to all the winners, of all lengths, and finalists, too.
Whew, that there's a lot of reading references! I hope you find it useful not just for voting on the Locus survey, but for future reading, too.
Best,
Chris
List what you consider the best novels in two separate categories - SF and fantasy - and combined SF/F in the novella, novelette, and short-story length. (Lots of horror in there, too; you pick where you think it best fits.) The 20th century gets 10 ranked positions for each category, and 21st century fiction gets five; I assume this heavier weight-per-year (100 gets 10 slots, 12 gets 5 slots) is because we better remember recent work?
Anyhow, GO DO IT! Here are a ton of resources to refresh your memory (I certainly needed them):
The Center for the Study of Science Fiction's Basic Science Fiction Library: Mostly lists novels, but also contains some short fiction. This list is ordered by author, spanning all time. Includes publication dates and even links where we could find them! If you see any glaring omissions, please let me know and we'll consult about adding those works.
The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best SF novel winners list: Goes back to 1972 novels (that is, the first Campbell Award-winning novel in 1973 was for a novel published in 1972).
The John W. Campbell Memorial Award finalist list: Goes back to 2003. I recommend looking through the finalist lists of the major awards, because what you might consider the best works don't always win! True for me, anyway.
Locus put together this fantastic list of 20th century SF/F novels: They mix SF and fantasy, so you'll have to decide on some of these where a novel belongs. How did they get on this list? "The lists include, first, every title that's won a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, British Fantasy, British SF, Campbell, Sturgeon, Clarke, International Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, or Bram Stoker award [except for first novels categories]. Second, every title that has been a nominee or runner-up for any two of these awards is included. Third, for 20th century novels, every title included in four or more reference works or polls, such as David Pringle's Science Fiction: 100 Best Novels, Neil Barron's Anatomy of Wonder, NPR's recent poll, and some 50 other works and polls compiled as part of the sfadb.com project, is included. For 21st century novels, since relatively few such references are recent enough to cover that period, the bar is lowered to inclusion in any one such work. The bars are set so that the number of titles added to the lists from such references is about the same as the number of titles included due to award standings."
The Locus list of 21st century SF/F novels: See above notes for details.
NPR's crowd-sourced Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books of all time.
The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short SF: Goes back to 1986 stories of all length shorter than the novel (that is, the first Sturgeon Award-winner in 1987 was for a short work published in 1986).
The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist list: Goes back to 2003.
The Locus list of 20th century short SF/F. How did they get on this list? "For short fiction, the supplement to awards data is the number of anthology and collection reprints a story has accumulated, based on data compiled in the Locus Index to Science Fiction by William Contento. For 20th century stories, the bar is more than 8; for 21st century stories, the bar is more than 2, though the Index is not complete through 2010 and some recent titles have been added based on manual inspection of various year's-best anthologies. Again, the bars are set so that the final lists are roughly divided between titles via award references and titles via reprint references. For works not on the short fiction lists, there are word-count guidelines on the 20th century short fiction page."
The Locus list of 21st century short SF/F: See above for details. Also note that the letters in the publication-date info for suggestions of which category to use: ss is for short story, nvt is for novelette, nva is for novella.
The Nebula Award for best SF/F of the year list: This is Wikipedia's novel list, but also links to all the other lengths. (The official SFWA Nebula Award site only goes back to 2000.)
Hugo Award for best SF/F of the year list: Links to all the winners, of all lengths, and finalists, too.
Whew, that there's a lot of reading references! I hope you find it useful not just for voting on the Locus survey, but for future reading, too.
Best,
Chris
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