- Gunshot to butt helps … er, crack case. (H/T for the laugh to LA)
- No drugs, no alcohol. Just vast quantities of stupid found at the scene.
- Used to be, the more student debt you incurred, the more likely you were to own a house. ‘Cause after all, that debt meant you were better schooled, therefore better paid. Not so much any more.
- More on politically correct academia devouring its own. I liked Joel’s take better.
- Our Masters do not like being humiliated. (H/T Shel from comments)
- Susan Cain: TED talk on The Power of Introverts. Boy, is that the truth. (Tip o’ hat to A.G. in comments)
- Solitude. Isolation. Endurance. Hallucinations. And madness.
“Vast quantities of stupid” is right, but I still feel sorry for the girl. (Incidentally, this occurred very near to where I live, so it’s gotten a lot of local news time.) He asked her to shoot him (to test the vest, I suppose) so there was no evil intent; it was purely an accident. It’s ridiculous for the police to have charged her with a crime; hopefully the local prosecutor will have more sense and will dismiss this.
Joel’s take is indeed brilliant. I’m going into competition with him. I may not be quite as “toxic” as he is so I’ll probably have to charge less and be content with lesser institutions of higher learning (he may have the Ivy League market sewn up), but there should be room enough in the market for us both.
You’re a nicer person than I am, Laird. When somebody deliberately points a gun and deliberately pulls the trigger, there’s no way I could ever call the outcome an accident.
I do feel sorry for the girl, though. More sorry in some ways than I feel for the dumbass who asked to be shot. Feel even sorrier for family he left behind.
I think they’re going to seek to make an example of the girl who shot the guy. After all it’ll help their “case” about gun control.
Vast quantities. What kind of “bulletproof vest” doesn’t cover the heart?
As a card-carrying* introvert I agree completely, it takes both kinds. There are several pairs of people I meet on my morning walks. Some are couples, some look more like siblings or friends, and there are mom-teams with kids the same ages. In many cases one will be a nonstop talker, with the other “uh- huh-ing” along.
My alma mater has to schedule several graduation ceremonies. The engineering school alone had 1400 graduates for May. Three hours. So they schedule one separate ceremony with a speaker that those who want to listen can attend, then each school has its own ceremony to do the diploma thing.
PITA for my (introvert) daughter, who is arena foreman and has to run all the shows, but it works.
Given Texas A&M’s makeup, Joel probably won’t get the rejection he’s looking for.
Glad I could brighten the day.
* Library card.
“* Library card.”
🙂 I knew you and I were kindred spirits.
@LarryA: It was a flack jacket, not a bulletproof vest.
I suspected that. The same issue arises, hearts are important. (Unless the bullet penetrated the vest instead of going over it.)
With regards to the guy who asked his girlfriend to shoot him…
What kind of “bulletproof vest” doesn’t cover the heart?
The kind that was not worn correctly would be my guess. Anyone who is stupid enough to ask another person to shoot him probably didn’t have the smarts to wear the vest correctly or he probably put it on in a way to make himself look cool.
As far as sympathy for the girlfriend, she had the option to say no. Maybe I am a hard man but in my world safety begins in between the ears. Remember if you don’t want to destroy it don’t point a gun at it. Simple huh.
“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.” – Robert A Heinlein
Fascinating article on solitude, isolation, and endurance. But I think it attempts to lump too many dissimilar experiences together. There’s a big distinction between captivity (loss of freedom), solitude (loss of human contact), and sensory deprivation (loss of sensory input). There’s also a giant difference between what someone chooses to voluntarily undergo and what someone is forced to endure.
I happen to be a huge fan of isolation tanks and have found the experience of spending quality time in one to be nothing but overwhelmingly positive. But again, how can you even compare a couple of hours of pure joyous self-indulgence with extended involuntary lockup in a supermax?
I would encourage anyone who is interested to not let the aforementioned article dissuade you from undergoing sensory deprivation. A much more positive perspective on it can be found here and here, though again, we’re now generally talking about a self-selected population of people who actively sought out the experience.
I sometimes fantasize about trying out the Anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories. Maybe someday 😉
Sensory isolation would be my idea of hell… on steroids.
Meditation, a nice soak in the tub, swimming, and a great many other things can help one to choose their environment and sensory experience.
Sensory deprivation is right at the top of effective torture methods, so it is hard to understand why someone would actually choose such a situation. Never was a fan of asceticism myself.
But, obviously, each to his/her own.
Jim B., FWIW there is NO interest in gun control in South Carolina. We’re all armed.
And the girl was only 18. You’re allowed to be stupid at 18. Heck, it’s expected. The guy she shot was 25; he is the one who should have known better. Anyway, he paid the appropriate price, as MJR noted. I hope someone nominates him for the Darwin Award.
I don’t believe the girl should be charged with a crime. One of the necessary elements is criminal intent; if she thought – however foolishly – that what she was doing would be harmless, there’s no criminal intent, especially if she only did it because the guy wanted her to.
One representative for a protective vest company (I can’t remember which one and I haven’t bothered to look it up) used to regularly have a bullet shot at a vest he would be wearing at a demonstration, with no undesirable results as far as I know.
I read a story about a man who had urged a friend to stab a vest he was wearing for a demonstration. It took a lot of urging, but the friend finally did it. Then the man urged him to do it again, which he did with fatal results.
I was involved in a case in DC in the early 1970’s where two teenage couples were at a house; one boy had a small handgun, probably a .25 caliber. He got on his knees in front of a sofa and urged his girlfriend to pull the trigger while it was pointed at his temple. She tragically did so. The surviving three of them ran to a barber down the block; he told me they were all definitely very upset. In an interview while incarcerated before trial, the girl made an open palm up and down motion as if testing the weight. She said she held the gun for about five minutes before pulling the trigger and thought it was a toy. When asked how long it would take to walk across that very small room, she said about three minutes. I found her to be credible. Her parents had the case transferred from a relatively inexperienced public defender (who years later became an administrative law judge) to an attorney who handled civil cases, even though the public defender had strongly advised them to hire a criminal defense attorney. At the trial the attorney never called the barber, never brought out the defendant’s misunderstanding of time measurement, and didn’t know the law of manslaughter so he couldn’t argue it. After the predictable result, the parents of the deceased, who had been very sympathetic to the defendant, left the courtroom with one saying to the other, “maybe she really did do it.”
In the case linked here, I initially was very sympathetic to the girl until I saw her facebook postings. I don’t know (and the reporter probably didn’t either) what the deceased was wearing, as Vietnam era flak vests didn’t use Kevlar and modern protective vests don’t open in the front. Involuntary manslaughter charges usually, I think, come after a fight where the survivor really didn’t mean to kill the deceased. Here there’s no showing there was any intent even to harm. While I can’t find words adequate to describe the stupidity, it’s just another instance of stupid people playing with guns and causing a fatality. That’s a story as old as firearms themselves, I imagine.
Laird: How did you get italics in your comments? I can’t even do it by cutting and pasting.
I didn’t say the girl should be punished. The loss of a friend and the hit on her conscience should be enough for her stupidity. She did violate one of Cooper’s “Laws” of gun handling, “Never point your gun on anything(or anyone) you’re not willing to destroy”.
All it would take is for some prosecutor looking to make a name, and maybe become a politician, to go ahead with such a case. That’s all I’m saying.
Shel, you’re thinking of Richard Davis, the founder of Second Chance.
As for isolation and sensory deprivation causing mental disorders, that’s the subject of the very first episode of The Twilight Zone, titled “Where Is Everybody”.
Jim B: I didn’t take your comments that way. I agree; it’s a great PR gun control opportunity.
Loki: I thought it might be Second Chance. I was just too lazy to look it up. Thanks.
I was getting bored with my same-‘ole, same-‘ole websites, bloggers, and commentators, so I decided to branch out a little. You know, read some stuff from the far left. I found a website called “Politicususa” that had a distinctly left-of-center take on politics, economics, and foreign policy. To say they hated Rand Paul is as much of an understatement as to say they merely loved Obama and Hillary.
So I joined in their conversations, commenting on their stories and their comments. It didn’t take long before they were accusing me of being a Republican and having sex with dogs. (Not guilty of either charge.) Nevertheless, I kept my comments on-point and respectfull, supporting my arguments with links, and agreeing where I could, so as not to be a complete thorn in their backsides.
Then, about two weeks ago, I could no longer post comments. I couldn’t even see other people’s comments. I wrote to the website asking if my status had changed, but I’ve received no response.
The pity is that these are not stupid people. They are just lazy. By living in their little echo chamber where only like-minded people are allowed to speak, they become dumbed down and shallow. What Rand Paul actually says and believes is not as important as calling him a racist, belittling him by calling him Randy, and claiming he works for Wall Street. Hillary’s actions are always noble and intelligent, and anyone who doesn’t think so is a knuckle dragging troglodyte.
Well, I’ve been banned (I assume) from a ‘liberal’ website that is more close-minded than any ‘conservative’ site I have ever visited. Political correctness goes so far that facts cannot be allowed into the conversation lest they corrupt the liberal narrative. Oh well, back to Living Freedom, Antiwar.com, and Daily Paul…
Ron: I’m not sure it’s just laziness, at least from the people running the site. They seem like propagandists, who want only to indoctrinate while pretending they are being “fair.” The readers and a lot of the commentators may be lazy or simply people who don’t want to know what’s going on, because they perhaps know at an unconscious level that they will find reality quite unpleasant. And there’s always that innate difference between liberals and conservatives in their way of looking at things. Good for you for trying, anyway. I made an attempt one night after an ESPN article delved into Sandy Hook. Most of the other commentators relied on one line zingers to prove their superior intellect. So much for that.
“Sensory isolation would be my idea of hell… on steroids.”
For people who have trouble blocking things out, sensory deprivation can be a godsend. For people who need to block themselves out, sensory deprivation can destroy them.
I wonder how closely some of the experiments matched the old-fashioned vision quest used in so many cultures?
I went through a vision quest once, and shortly afterward took a class on how to run one. One of the things mentioned in that class was that people spend 99% of their time, energy, and money trying to distract themselves FROM themselves. Being the kind of person who loves solitude, I didn’t understand that. Years later when I mentioned going camping by myself, my sis-in-law looked at me like I was insane and said she goes into a panic attack if she’s alone for 5 minutes, because she can’t stand the sound of her own mind.
Shel, if you’re still interested in italics, I use HTML tags. There are lots of them, but the only ones I normally use are italics and boldface. The way you use them is type “” before the word or phrase you want to affect and “” after it. (I hope that all comes out when I post this; there is no way to preview comments here). For the “[code]”, use “i” (or “em”) for italics and “b” for boldface. That’s it. Just be sure to use both the open and close carets around the code each time, and the “/” when you end the tag (otherwise all the rest of your post will remain in italics or whatever). Hope that helps.
Well, I see that it didn’t come out as I had intended. There was supposed to be some stuff between those pairs of parentheses in the third sentence. For the first pair of parentheses, what that “stuff” was is an open caret (“”). For the second pair, the same thing except that a diagonal (“/”) follows the open caret and precedes the “[code]”. So to place a word into italics, before the word type an open caret, the letter “i” and a close caret, and after the word type an open caret followed by a left diagonal, then the letter “i”, then a close caret. Use the same format for any other HTML tag (i.e., “b” for bold, “strike” for strike-through, etc.)
Hopefully this will come out intelligible.
Damn, this system won’t let me write anything about HTML. The pair of quotation marks in parenthesis in the third sentence was supposed to contain an open caret, the word [code], and a close caret. Here is an open caret: . I told you what to use for the [code] in the first post.
Can’t even type a stand-alone caret. Shit. Well, on my keyboard the open caret is above the comma and the close caret is above the period (and the diagonal is below the question mark). Hope that helps, because I’m now giving up.
Re: isolation article. I thought the same as others have mentioned, this article seems to have rolled a few completely different things together to try to prove the point.
I have those some of symptoms if I have to be around people, LOL, so obviously I’m not going to get their point when I am a hermit at heart. But I’m an only child, I have spent most of my life doing things on my own and can entertain myself just fine. I have gone weeks without talking to or seeing another human being and never had what they describe happen. I agree with the others who made the point that it’s an entirely different situation when one is forced to do something vs choosing to – that’s the real issue behind how a mind handles it.
I have enough mistrust of people to wonder when these types of articles come along if it’s some plot to make people be people dependent just so everyone herds together quickly and easily, when that time comes. However my mistrust and (probably even) paranoia comes from prior experiences with other people, not from being isolated.
Italics test: italics
Laird: Thanks very much. Hooray!
Related, follow-on to the commencement speaker thing. P.J. O’Rourke addresses Rutgers.
jed — Thanks, that’s some fine, well-informed curmudgeonliness from Mr. O’Rourke!