It’s winter, such as it is, in Phoenix.  What that means is that we get to sleep with the windows open, which makes it deliciously cool at night.

The Wife^® sleeps closest to the window.  Recently, she’s become a cat magnet at night.  We have two cats, and it’s not uncommon to find both of them snuggled up with her.

There was a touch of disagreement about whether the heaping of cats could be attributed to an abundance of cat love for The Wife^®, or the temperature at night.

Last night we solved that debate.  It’s the temperature.

I took the spot closest to the window, and awoke several times during the night with two cats piled on me, while The Wife^® had no cat visitors on the far side of the bed.

There was a story a few years ago about a cat who was a Harbinger of Death.  There are many theories as to why the cat seeks out dying patients, but I’m going to guess it has something to do with blankets and/or a really comfy place to sleep.

“Unfortunately, America loves Guns. We love guns to a point where that uh we see devastation on a daily basis. You don’t blame a group.” – Mayor Daley, link heads to Founding Bloggers

What an interesting statement. I must agree that (and to me this is obvious) crazy individual people should be treated as crazy individuals. When there are groups of crazy individuals, the rules have to change.

It’s possible that Mayor Daley is politically posturing and spinning the tragedy into a rally call for stiffer gun control. Even if he is, such a statement would gain no ground and would make him look foolish if there weren’t already people who believe that it’s absolutely true.

There are people that argue with me about gun control, and 99% of the time, they start with a bad assumption.

• Less guns = less suicides
• Theives use owner’s guns against them all the time
• Innocent bystanders get shot by legally carried guns
• Fatal shooting accidents are just as common as murders
• More guns turns normal anger like road rage into killings

These assumptions are not backed up by factual information. It doesn’t seem to matter how many papers or statistics I cite, these arguments inevitably end with me being accused of believing false information. That’s rather convenient. Rather than have to find fact or theory that’s a credible defense of their point, they simply dismiss my sources altogether. So I stopped arguing about numbers and reality, I’ll meet them on the philosophical and anecdotal levels.

To their credit, I’ve never encountered one of these arguments in which I’m accused of lying or somehow craving death and murder, so that’s a good thing.

It’s amazing though how closed-minded the anti-gun movement really is. Actual shooting injury and death data are waved away outright or openly skewed to fit their imagination.

The original imagined scenarios aren’t completely without logic. The most recent discussion, which took place about a month ago, was with a coworker. She, with no prompt from me, jumped from road-rage to handguns. She said she just couldn’t understand why anyone thought it was a good idea to allow people to carry guns, (paraphrase): “What if all these people that yell and get out of their cars and carry baseball bats, what if they had a gun? Then instead of someone getting punched, well now they’re dead!”

Okay, sounds logical, but it doesn’t happen that way. My favorite example is a good friend of mine who has a permit, and also has the quickest, most fiery temper I’ve ever seen. He’s a good man though, and hasn’t gotten in trouble with the law, which is why they gave him the permit. When he carries, he’s a different man. Totally calm. There’s a mental barrier there and I know why my coworker doesn’t trust it and it’s a good thing. She doesn’t understand the barrier because her’s has never been tested. There’s a similar mental barrier that keeps people from being attracted to family members or to persons of inappropriate age. So yes, there’s people who cross that line, but rarely is it sudden and unpredictable, and when it is, I’d like to be armed so they don’t kill too many people before they’re stopped.

And that’s the second point: if there’s no guns, it means whomever has a bomb or other efficient weapon has enormous power.

I like to use metaphors to put things in a different light. Rape is worse than murder in some ways, at least in my opinion, and should be treated with a similar level of horror. So if the police were the only ones that could stop rape, would you trust them to show up? Would you trust them so much that you’d feel safe? Or is it easier to imagine that the vast majority of people, given the means and opportunity, would go to great lengths to stop or prevent a rape and not participate in one.

Stiff gun control forces the public to trust the government. Think about it. Do you really trust congress, judges, senators, state troopers to fight tooth and nail on your behalf? To make sound, just decisions more than you’d trust your friends (um, the ones who haven’t been convicted of crimes and have passed safety and legality courses)?

I tripped across a Celebrities Who Died in 2009 slideshow this morning, which is what inspired the last two posts.

As the title indicates, it was a bad year for the reformed Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Keyboardist Billy Powell died in January, and bassist Ean Evans died in May.

Evans himself replaced original bassist Leon Wilkeson, who died in 2001.

Before flamboyant Captain Jack Sparrow captured the hearts and minds of the world, another famous flamboyant Captain held that spot: Captain Lou Albano.

Albano, pictured here with longtime collaborator/sometimes enemy Cyndi Lauper, died last month at the age of 76.

Captain Lou, who wasn’t really a Captain of anything (except maybe a few wrestling teams?), was a staple of the WWWF in the 1980’s.

He also had quite the acting career.  He starred as Mario in the Super Mario Brother’s Super Show, which lasted one whole season.  He also had bit parts in 227, Hey Dude!, and Miami Vice.

But perhaps the most interesting part of Captain Lou’s career is the part that involves Lauper.

Lou and Lauper met each other on a plane in 1983.  Lou went on to star as Lauper’s father in the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun video.  This served as the impetus for the WWF (who had dropped a W by now) and MTV Rock ‘n’ Wrestling storyline.

Albano, who was an evil character in the WWF, continued to star in Lauper videos (including She Bop, Time After Time, and The Goonies R’ Good Enough) while simultaneously trashing Lauper during WWF performances.  He claimed that he was the real genius behind Lauper’s success and that he was the real author of her hit songs.  (Which would be odd, incidentally, since She Bop is about female masturbation.)

The whole thing boiled over into a feud that saw Albano and Lauper managing rivals in the 1984 MTV/WWF Brawl to End it All.

After Albano lost the match, he underwent surgery to remove the calcium deposits on his medula oblongata, which cured him of his evil tendencies.

Post operation, Lauper and Albano teamed up to co-chair the MS fund-raising efforts, raising over $4 million for the cause.

Then, Roudy Roddie Piper smashed a gold record over Lou’s head, and the rest is history.

R.I.P. Captain Lou.

BTW, This article is fantastic.  Not only does it include some must see videos, it draws a parallel between the Lauper/Albano feud and another ongoing feud.  It’s a must read.

I’m not kidding.

Mariamu Stanford, a soft-spoken, 28-year-old single mother from rural Tanzania, has earned a grim distinction: She’s one of only two people with albinism — a group that has faced discrimination in East Africa — to survive a brutal attack by those wanting to sell the limbs of albinos on the black market.

Video story at ABC

Old news, but I just found out… Moose, the Jack Russell terrier, best known for playing Eddie on Frasier, died back in 2006. He received the most fan mail of anyone on Frasier. Take that, Hyde-Pierce! He was the youngest of 4 in his litter, but he was the biggest, hence the name. When he died, he was 15 and a half, which made him 78 in dog years.

Source: imdb

It’s over.

General Motors said today it would shut down Saturn after respected Detroit businessman Roger Penske shocked GM and 350 Saturn dealers by saying that his plans to buy the storied brand had fallen apart.

The announcement came a day before GM and its dealers expected the deal to be finalized. The failure could cost as many as 13,000 jobs at dealerships nationwide and GM.

A few years ago I’d have felt bad. Today the news hits me as a solid Meh.

For the record, 5/8 of the cars The Wife^® and I have owned were Saturns.

Goodbye Mary

With officially just one week left in “the Summer of Death,” we lose another.

Patrick Wayne Swayze, who played such roles as Greaser Darrel Curtis, Ruskie survivor Jed, inappropriate pedophile dancer Johnny Castle, SNL Chip ‘n Dales dancer #2, cross dressing “Too Wong Foo” fan Vida, and ‘ditto’ ghost Sam Wheat, passed away yesterday to pancreatic cancer. He was 57 years old.

We’ll make sure no one puts Baby in the corner, now that you are gone.

Source: IMDB

Norman Borlaug died the other day. He is being remembered as “The Man Who Saved More Human Lives Than Any Other.”

In the 1960’s Borlaug bred a new type of wheat that was resistant to disease and produced much higher yields.

“Experts” at the time were predicting worldwide famine, but it never happened – thanks to the new wheat.

Borlaug’s wheat was in fact very successful:

In Pakistan, wheat yields rose from 4.6 million tons in 1965 to 8.4 million in 1970. In India, they rose from 12.3 million tons to 20 million. And the yields continue to increase. Last year, India harvested a record 73.5 million tons of wheat, up 11.5 percent from 1998. Since Ehrlich’s dire predictions in 1968, India’s population has more than doubled, its wheat production has more than tripled, and its economy has grown nine-fold. Soon after Borlaug’s success with wheat, his colleagues at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research developed high-yield rice varieties that quickly spread the Green Revolution through most of Asia.

Reason has a very interesting article by a guy who spent quite a bit of time with Mr. Borlaug. It’s worth a read.

And The Times Online has a article spotlighting the tributes in India, where he is remembered as a man who saved 245 million lives.

Not a bad life’s work for an Iowa farm boy.