Tag: blogging

Feeling Annoyed

/ John Weathers / 3 Comments

I’m feeling annoyed that I made a stupid resolution to write these things daily this year. I’m not entirely sure that this is the root of my annoyance though. It’s actually highly likely not. We played games with friends this evening and before the gaming we had dinner during which we talked briefly about sinus infections and allergies and treatments. I am currently taking prednisone along with some antibiotics and a nasal spray because my allergy doctor was concerned about the fact that I seemed quite congested at our visit after I had been undergoing treatment with allergy shots over the last six months. He basically wanted to treat me for a possible case of chronic sinus infection.

This particular treatment has been awesome. I’m able to breath clearly through both nostrils which is something rare for me and not really something can remember. Even when my nostrils were “clear” before, I can see now that they weren’t as clear as they’ve been over the last five days of treatment. Today was my last dosage of prednisone. I had mentioned this in passing to our friends, and they had related warnings how prednisone can make one irritable. I had seen that it could possible cause depression.

In retrospect, I think it may have been effecting my mood in this way. It’s hard to tell though because I’m naturally prone to feeling depressed when it’s rainy and overcast as it has been for the last few days. Today was extremely foggy and wet and dreary. As I was feeding the dogs this morning, I was disturbed by the grating slurping sound of rain drops hitting the saturated foot mat that we have on our back porch. Drip. Drip. Drip.

It did seem as though an internal fog shrouded my thoughts today painting everything as grey as the world outside. We can expect more of this ickiness tomorrow and Thursday – possibly with some snow flurries. I hate snow flurries. Once we I had never seen snow accumulation, the sight of snow flurries dancing light walzes in the air had been a jolt of excitement, but now they are just a reminder that I’m far away from real snow and the possibility of skiing.

So now the question is whether or not the irritated state of mind that I found myself in when I started writing this entry was from the prednisone, the mere suggestion that prednisone could cause irritation, from going to bed too late last night, finding the rules of Race for the Galaxy frustrating, or all of the above.

Of course, there’s always the background malaise of the suffering and death piling up daily everywhere. The abandoned pets being executed. The homeless people living a wretched existence. The people weeping over the loss of loved ones. People getting sick or dying for lack of access to health care. People losing their jobs and then their homes. People who are better off spitting words of contempt like fiery projectiles onto the heads of the poor. Bombs dropping to shatter buildings and bodies.

I could continue, but I’ll stop now. I’ve met my quota and I think I’m rather tired.

Shooting Down Straw Men

/ John Weathers / 1 Comment

In the wake of the terrible string of shooting sprees that made their way into the public conscious through focused media coverage in 2012, there has been an upsurge in the debate over gun ownership:

Shortly after the Connecticut shootings, I began observing cheeky memes that attacked advocates of stronger gun control laws by humorously implying that since criminals don’t obey the law, then gun control laws won’t be effective. A similar kind of attack is to point out that laws against drug usage don’t prevent people from using drugs. Beginning with the first point, we can agree that, of course, criminals don’t obey laws – by definition a criminal is someone who breaks the law. It does not follow that laws are therefore useless. Indeed, I’d wager the vast majority of the people putting forth this “clever” argument are far from advocates of abolishing all laws. That’s because laws do accomplish things for good and ill. Breaking a law is risky and in most cases, fear of punishment for breaking a law is a deterrent. Thus, laws reduce behavior even if they do not eliminate it. The fact is that the criminals-don’t-obey laws attack is setting up a straw man by subtly slipping in the idea that supporters of gun control seek to eliminate mass shootings when in fact they merely seek to make them less likely. By holding up an impossible standard, the arguers give the false impression of absurdity to the political view that they oppose.

The related meme concerning drug laws has the same implied false standard of effectiveness, but also falsely equates drug usage and gun usage when they are very different behaviors. Drugs directly stimulate pleasure zones in the body and are addictive. Thus, people are more likely to take risks such as breaking the law to acquire them as the short term pleasure reward overrides their ability to reason correctly about the dangers of the long term health risks or the possibility of getting imprisoned. In contrast, gun ownership doesn’t directly tap into the body’s pleasure system and so most gun owners aren’t going to find continued gun ownership worth the risk of imprisonment or the risk of dealing with the black market. Therefore, while guns would continue to exist and criminals would find ways to still acquire them, if guns laws were strengthened or if guns were banned, overall ownership would be reduced significantly and the chances of someone who is likely to go on a shooting spree having access to a gun would also be reduced.

It is not gun enthusiasts nor even professional or semi-professional criminals who are the ones using guns to commit mass murder. Gun enthusiasts just want to collect guns and use them for hunting and marvel over their crafting. Criminals just want to use them to help conduct their “business” – not to kill random members of the general public. It’s the mentally disturbed or those who pick up a gun impulsively in the heat of emotion or distress who are using them to slaughter people. The logic behind tighter gun regulation then is to make it harder for these people to get their hands on guns.

Personally, I find guns repugnant as agents of death. Politically, however, I support a regulated right to bear arms, especially when exercised collectively in the context of collective defense. What this means for me varies depending upon the culture in question. In our society and culture, I support strengthening our gun regulation laws to include aspects of Japan’s gun control laws such as restrictions on what kind of weapons can be owned, successful completion of safety courses for gun owners, periodic mental health evaluation for gun owners and those with whom they live, and verification that guns are stored securely and safely.

Yet Another Day and Another Post

/ John Weathers / Leave a comment

This morning I got up and within no time had a topic for blogging in mind. I set to work writing my brief introduction to the material that I wished to covered when I realized that it would be nice to embed a Google Trends graph into my WordPress Post. It seemed like so trivial to do. After all, Google nicely provided the javascript code to neatly embed it, but it  turned out to be quite a bit of work to discover how to apply it in the context of a WordPress blog.

It wasn’t nearly as easy or convenient as it should be. The WordPress editor appears to not give one the ability to insert just any old HTML and JavaScript into your post – which is inconvenient when one wants to stretch beyond the capabilities of its Visual Editor, but one doesn’t want to fully roll up one’s sleeves and get down to messing directly with the PHP code under the hood.

My first thought was naturally that some plugin had been written that would make this task easy. A customized bit of WordPress shortcode perhaps? Or maybe an editor extension with a popup field editor for receiving JavaScript to embed. But alas I searched through several plugin candidates and didn’t find any of them at all suitable other than one that was a “Lite” version supported for advertising, and I didn’t really wish to embed ads into my post.

By this point, I’d lost the opportunity to get an early start on my blog post, and it was time to get the day going with breakfast for Melinda and me. I made us some oatmeal with cinnamon and brown sugar (for me) and walnuts (for her) with our usual coffee. We then had a short while to get ready for the rest of the day before heading out to have lunch with my mother-in-law and her husband. Then, we returned home and spent over an hour gathering old clothing and unused kitchen appliances for Good Will. Finally, we also cleaned out a ghastly amount of junk and clutter that had been lurking underneath our master bathroom sinks – mostly under mine. It felt good to clear out all the space and put useful things back inside in a nice and organized manner.

Next, we headed out to Good Will, followed by a stop by Whole Foods where we picked up groceries for the week including the stuff necessary to prepare one of our favorite dishes from Alicia Silverstone’s Kind Diet receipe book – Rustic Pasta.

Rustic Pasta!

While Melinda was getting the pasta together, I played DJ via Spotify and Airplay and also tried to find some way around my problem of embedding JavaScript inside a WordPress post. I found some code examples for Google Maps and after several false starts through testing out plugins, I decided to get down in the dirt and write a tiny plugin of my own to accomplish exactly what I needed. In the end, writing a plugin to do it was quite, quite simple. I should have done it from the start, but really it shouldn’t have required me to write any code. Just because I can write code, doesn’t mean I should have to when using blog software.

Although my obstacle was now removed, I didn’t have time to write the post as dinner was about ready. We enjoyed our last bottle of wine that we brought back from our trip to France late last year. It was a 2008 Gevrey-Chambertin, and we both found it quite good – especially with our meal. Afterwards, we decided to get ourselves caught up with Downton Abbey.

We watched the Christmas Episode of Downton Abbey that capped season two and then watched the first episode of season three which aired on PBS just last week. I am pleased to say that we found that the writing has improved immensely and returned to its excellent from from season one. The Christmas Episode was quite wonderful in every way and the season three premier left us eagerly waiting for the new season to unfold.

However, we didn’t realize what we getting ourselves into and found ourselves staring at half past midnight when we finished up! Melinda was rather tired and I found myself once again trying to quickly pound out 500 words on this blog. I decided to hold off on what I had intended to write about because I felt that I could more quickly write something more descriptive and stream of thought than trying to write something more thoughtful as I had originally intended.

Fortunately, it will keep for another day!