Brinks Home Alarm Advertisement

Have y’all seen that Brinks ad for their home security system? It’s designed, of course, to sell alarm systems. I find a few things in it that should make you think:

1. When the bad guy kicks in the front door, the alarm sounds, and the bad guy immediately runs away. I don’t think it’s likely that would happen in my neighborhood – maybe if you lived next door to the police station. Where I live, 20 minutes out of town, your response time is usually 20 minutes on up.

2. The alarm company calls the home before any response happens. From experience at my job, I know they will call going down a list until somebody answers. If you tell them you need help, then they will call the cops. If you are on the floor, being raped, you are not going to be able to answer the phone. If no one answers, the alarm company will go down the list to the next person to call. This process adds to the response time.

3. Because of the above, the bad guy is not in any particular hurry to run away. If he is intent on violence, you are dead meat.

4. Notice that after all that, the police show up. They take a statement. They leave. They did not protect anybody. They would if they could, but they weren’t there when the bad guy was. This isn’t the fault of the police – it’s just the facts of the situation.

Don’t get me wrong – an alarm system is a great idea. Just don’t expect it to protect you from anything. It’s mostly useful to wake you up if you’re asleep, so you can get your gun; or to let the cops know your house has been broken into when you’re gone. But it can’t protect you from anything.

If you want protection from the bad guys, buy a gun and learn to use it. Protect yourself – because when you need it, you’re likely going to be the only help you’ve got.

Even that doesn’t guarantee that you will come out all right – but at least you’ll have a chance.

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Violent Crime in Gun Filled Zones

Isn’t it interesting how you never seem to hear about any sort of violent crime, murders, rapes or things like that – at shooting ranges?

If you believed the anti-gun crowd, it looks like there would be murders and shoot-outs left and right in those places – after all, nearly everybody there is armed!

Instead, you get a bunch of polite, friendly people who mutually respect each other and everybody has a good time pursuing their sport. People you’ve never met before are friendly and polite. This is awesome.

More guns = less crime. Statistically proven again and again. Check out http://www.gunfacts.info/

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Quote for the Day #2

“Never try to teach a pig to sing – it wastes your time and annoys the pig.” – Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love by R.A. Heinlein

Quote for the Day

“You know there’s no advantage to be gained by murdering idiots – it doesn’t teach the idiot anything and it might give onlookers the idea that you take them seriously…” – from Halting State by Charles Stross.

Good book, so far.

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Macintosh Revisited

Howdy, friends;

After about 11 months, I still love the Mac, and OS X. I can’t think of the last time I’ve had to fool around with it to get something to work the way it’s supposed to. Unlike Windows. And this Friday, the next version of OS X will be here. This ought to be fun! And, it’s $129. Check out the price of Windows sometime…

On the interesting software side of things, check out “The Brain”. This is a very capable personal information manager with a truly innovative user interface. The interface highlights the relationships between things. For instance, I have a ‘brain’ that has pumps, related to orders and also related to job sites. You can easily find an order, or the pumps that were on that order, or the field locations where they are actually located. This program has versions that run on Windows or the Mac. Incredible. Check it out here.

Excellent stuff.

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Cataracts…

Howdy, everybody.

Found out yesterday that I have early stage cataracts. That means that, sometime in the next few years I will need to get lens replacements. That’s expensive. On the other hand, they now have multi-focus lenses to implant, that should pretty much correct my vision 100%. At least, there is a good probability of that outcome, and that would be really nice – I’ve been wearing glasses since the sixth grade.

Getting old sucks. Getting bionic eyes – maybe not so much. If and when, I’ll let you know how it turns out.

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Symptoms of a Church in Trouble

Some Symptoms of a Sick Church – in no particular order:

1. The preacher becomes an automatic member of every committee and uses his influence to exert control.
2. Committees tend to abdicate their power in favor of the preacher, taking his word for gospel.
3. The preacher tries to place people, associates or family, who are in favor of his plans or actions, into key positions within the church.
4. The preacher feels he has to be involved in every important decision.
5. The preacher’s recruitment priority for new church members has wealth as a criteria.
6. Lots of money gets spent on the pastor’s pet projects.
7. There is talk that the preacher is not always totally honest, and tends to blame others for his mistakes or shortcomings.
8. Corners get cut in long-standing church business procedures.
9. Members begin to leave as they realize some of these things are going on.
10. There is friction between the preacher and those staff or members who are in a position to know about some of the questionable decisions and events.

Of course, it’s probably a bad sign if the preacher or any of his associates have a history of causing problems or stealing money at their prior church or churches.

Just some things to watch out for… See my earlier post.

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Church Troubles are Over – for Me

I have decided to stay out of the issues that are going on at my church. God is going to have to find somebody else to handle this one. It is better to do no harm, than it is to possibly hurt people while trying to do good; at least in these specific circumstances. And I fear collateral damage to my family and friends.

But that church is sick, and I will not support it under the current pastor.

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Flags

All respect to Jim Broussard.

A business in Nevada was flying a Mexican flag above an American flag. Mr. Broussard cut it down. Good work, Mr. Broussard. News link here.

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Democratic Maneuvering

The Democrats pushed through a bill for children’s insurance that sounds good for the children but had problems with who would benefit and who would pay. The very people who need assistance the most would have born most of the burden of the cigarette tax. So President Bush vetoed it.

This situation was a win/win for the Democrats because, had it passed, it would be the first step in socialized medicine in the U.S. – something that isn’t working well in other countries. But since the bill was vetoed, it gives the Democrats another chance to vilify President Bush, making him out as careless of the children. And yet, President Bush actually wanted to expand the original funding to the program – it is the Democrats who want to expand it radically in directions that penalized the poor via increased taxation on cigarettes.

This is yet another example of extreme spin by the far left. In actuality, the Democrats set up something that, at first glance, looks good – but would actually be damaging when you study the details. And so the president has to block it, and the Democrats get to blast him yet again.

This is an example of political use of the media – anyone who actually studies what the Democrats proposed could see it would hurt poor people financially out of proportion to the benefit – but this truth is not evident in the headlines. All you will see there is how Bush vetoed free insurance for millions of kids, but still wants funding for the war effort. Talk about spin!

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