No more guns, ever

Most of the time police respond to a gun crime the shooter is long gone. I question the logic of being lethally armed as protecting police lives. What I'd like to see is an analysis of all of the situations in which police found themselves firing their weapons over the last say 30 years - how would a non-lethal like a taser have changed the situation? What is the practical net effect overall, all things considered (individual and societal psychology included)? Carrying a gun every day and everything that entails is what attracts many people to the police force, and I think it can be fairly hypothesized that such an initial distillation of character types primes the service for a certain brutish culture. You add to that the fact that police are keyed up from being exposed to life and death situations whenever they're out, and it's not surprising that you get the nervy cowboy effect we've been seeing with these unnecessary shootings and bullyings. The second amendment be damned, guns are technology that is ruining everything, not only should every single one of them be as illegal as a hand grenade, their manufacture needs to be severely curtailed. Other than how fun they are to shoot, there is nothing at all about guns that is good for civilian society. They are way too powerful and way too easy for young, immature people who don't know how to deal with overwhelming emotional problems to access. This is the only country where there are regular mass shootings of innocent people in public places, even little kids. We have to do something about it, we need to try some potential solutions.

Is it Ironic?

That one song comes up a lot as an example of the misuse of the word. Is it ironic? It could be with more context. Some of the lines need more context than others in order to qualify as ironic. I can't believe I'm about to do this when this lame song has been around for so long, but here goes. 

"An old man turned ninety-eight / He won the lottery and died the next day"

Yes, if he was struggling his whole life, no if not. In this case ‘turning 98’ is redundant to ‘died the next day’ - the point could be made equally since 98 year old people aren't really able to enjoy most things money can buy and it's a given that death is in the mail.

"It's a black fly in your Chardonnay"

Maybe with some convoluted context like it’s an exterminator celebrating a promotion to head exterminator or something.

"It's a death row pardon two minutes too late"

Maybe if the accused was known as the Punctual Killer or something like that.

"It's like rain on your weddin' day"

No, unless you’re experiencing a drought and decide at least you can get married without it getting rained out.

"It's a free ride when you've already paid"

Not by itself, though it’s primed for irony. You’d just need the extra detail like going out of your way to get payment for the ride (figuratively or literally).

It's the good advice that you just didn't take

By no means.

"Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly / He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids goodbye / He waited his whole damn life to take that flight / And as the plane crashed down he thought"

Sure. He didn’t fly all those years, all those planes probably didn’t crash. He finally does and it crashes. Irony.

"Well life has a funny way of sneakin' up on you / When you think everything's okay and everything's goin' right, right / And life has a funny way nobody helpin' you out when / You think everyhing's gone wrong and everything blows up in your face"

The key here is that it’s not ironic if everything is going a certain way and then there’s a 180 of fortune, it’s only ironic if you have every reason to believe that it will go a certain way and it goes the opposite way.

"A traffic jam when you're already late"

Nope.

"A no smoking sign on your cigarette break"

There’s enough suggested here to give this one to her. Like this well-earned break is symbolized by a cigarette you're allowed to take by those in authority, only to find some other authority disallowed it.

"It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife"

Not unless you threw away your knife in order to get all them spoons.

"It's meetin' the man of my dreams / And then meetin' his beautiful wife"

Convoluted context required again. I.e. ok if the wife turns out to be the person who convinced you to leave someone else because the man of dreams was so great.

Dumb Things in Otherwise Well-Regarded Movies 1.2

I really don’t understand why everybody made such a big deal about this stupid movie. It's gorgeous, and Javier Bardem is great, but it's a big ridiculous mess. Some point of reference: I thought Casino Royale was mostly pretty great and charming, and I agree with the rest of the world about how much Quantum of Solace sucked. In spite of it having a pretty cool title. So yes, this movie (which also has a pretty cool title) is full of dumb things. Such as:

• How the fuck do you blow up a building with the internet? We’re told that somebody “hacked into the system, disabled the security and turned on the gas.” OK. Let’s say the HVAC system in your super modern MI6 facility is networked for some reason. What would it physically take to make an actual gas leak happen? I'll have to check, but I don't think there's a setting for "release gas into the air" on my furnace. But I guess smart HVAC systems come equipped with a Wi-Fi enabled robot grabby stick ready to yank out gas lines. Just in case. 

You know, I bet that's why the fridge always freezes my bologna... 

• The identities of five secret agents embedded in terrorist groups get posted on youtube, with more reveals promised every week. M orders these five to be pulled out immediately, but three of them get assassinated. Even after that, she doesn't order the rest of them in, content instead to find out who's behind all this. I don't want to tell you how to do your job, M, but maybe we should have brought our people home, say, three months ago when the data containing their identities was stolen.

You're fired.

• Sylva wants an island so he makes everybody think there is a chemical spill with the internet. I guess nobody with chemical testing stuff bothered to check before completely abandoning all of everything forever.

• Hey, cosmonauts! Did you know that cyanide doesn't burn you? Nope, it just inhibits respiration. But I get that in keeping with the James Bond mythos they wanted some kind of hideous monster reveal for the villain, and they smartly figured that nobody would buy that agents get issued a hydrochloric acid tooth. For emergencies only!

Baby... Ruth!

• Why, oh why would you plug a hostile computer into your mainframe, or main networked computer system or whatever? Of COURSE it’s going to get hacked. Shit. Even my dog was like, Well, what did you think was going to happen? And he's a dog.

I think I fucked this up.

• Silva lets himself be caught so he can get close enough to exact revenge on M for giving him up to the Chinese. Q helpfully jams Silva's hack all the way up MI6's ass, unlocking his Hannibal Lecter cage so the two armed guards can watch through the glass while he casually approaches the unlocked door, opens it, steps out and kills them both.

I'm gonna get you guys!

• When and why did Silva plant a bomb in the tube like that? I'm just wondering what his plan was, since he seemed to use it specifically to cause a train to fall on Bond's head.

• Silva has his minions hand off a bobby uniform in the tube, then goes after M at her public hearing. He has no particular trouble doing this, by the way, in spite of the fact that this is a congregation with a British MP, among other presumably important people. But, why go to all this trouble if all you're going to do is barge into a public hearing and start shooting up the place? Couldn't he have done that at any point at all?

You're under arrest, sugar!

• HHokay. So Bond and M decide to lure Silva out into the open, and go out into the Scottish moors and get Q to leave an internet breadcrumb trail instead of firing him for being dumber than my dog. Fine. But take a day – take two! – to prepare before you activate your lure. You work for one of the most powerful governments on the planet. You can’t scare up a tank or two? Or even just call up a few friends, tell them to bring beer and sniper rifles. You can hang out on the rooftop and pick Silva’s men off a few at a time, stopping only to high-five one another until they’re all dead. Job well done, chaps!

Fuck you, awesome country mansion!