Aug 12 2009

God, guns, guts, American trucks, and clueless “reporters”

Category: economy,guns,media — harmonicminer @ 9:03 pm

Mark Muller is giving away an AK-47 (presumably the civilian legal semi-auto only version, which does NOT qualify as an “assault weapon”) with every new truck he sells.  Well, he’s giving them a voucher so that if they can qualify for the legal purchase of the weapon, they can use the voucher to buy it from a licensed gun store.

Watch this thing, and then notice how utterly, completely, risibly clueless this interviewer is. Observe what she must think:

1) If you need to defend yourself, your gun shouldn’t be TOO good. You might actually survive the encounter, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?

2) God doesn’t want us to defend ourselves or our loved ones. I hope she doesn’t have children.  Or loved ones.  All of whom deserve better from her.  Or, she was just asking a stupid question for which she didn’t believe the premise herself.  Either way, clueless.

3) She’s obviously ignorant about the definition of “assault weapon.” Civilian legal versions of the AK-47 aren’t assault weapons, because they are semi-automatic ONLY, one round per trigger pull, exactly like semi-auto hunting rifles.  But wait, she went to journalism school, I’m sure.  And we know that they always do their background research, right?  (Sidebar:  if someone wants to kill me from a distance, I HOPE they’re using an AK-47 and not a typical American semi-auto rifle, which is usually a LOT more accurate.  With the AK, they’ll probably miss the first shot, and I’ll hear it and have time to seek cover.  Hey…  this is starting to remind me of faculty meetings, in which I spend lots of time taking cover.)

4)  She apparently thinks that Jesus doesn’t want parents to protect their children, each other, or themselves.  Or she doesn’t think that, and is just asking another disingenuous question of the country bumpkin rube auto dealer. 

Keep in mind that these geniuses are the ones reporting to us on nationalized healthcare, foreign policy, the economy, and political intrigue  everywhere.  You decide if you think they’ve done any more background research on that than on this story.

Aug 12 2009

The unHoly Grail

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 5:34 pm

The Embryo as Human Being: A Scientific Case

For people who advocate the killing of embryonic human beings in the cause of biomedical research, the Holy Grail is an argument that would definitively establish that the human embryo, at least early in its development, is not a living human organism and therefore not a human being at all. The problem for these advocates is that all the scientific evidence points in precisely the opposite direction. Modern human embryology and developmental biology have shown that fertilization produces a new and distinct organism: a living individual of the human species in the embryonic stage of his or her development.

Some proponents of embryo-destructive research are willing to face up to these biological facts. They concede that human embryos are living individuals of the human species, but deny that this gives them the moral status of being persons. According to this argument, not all human beings are equal; not all possess inherent dignity and a right to life. Some, including those at early developmental stages, are not (or are not yet) “persons,” and they may therefore (at least in some circumstances, or in the pursuit of some goals) legitimately be killed.

There is much to be said against this position, but its defects are philosophical, not scientific. Its proponents recognize that there is no Holy Grail out there to find, and they are willing to defend the killing of human embryos while facing up to the biological facts. But then there are the Grail searchers. These people are determined to prove that what modern human embryology has been telling us is wrong, and to this end they scavenge the fields of molecular biology and human genetics.

Read it all.

Aug 12 2009

From the “too good to be true” department

Category: Uncategorized — harmonicminer @ 5:29 pm

Best Buy $9.99 TV offer was too good to be true

Few if any of the deals retailers have offered online during the recession have been as good as Best Buy Inc.’s sale price of $9.99 on a 52-inch TV Wednesday. But it quickly turned out the offer was too good to be true.

The electronics retailer said it will not honor the $9.99 price posted Wednesday morning on its Web site for a 52-inch Samsung flat-screen TV. By early afternoon, the TV was listed at $1,799.99, almost half off the original $3,399.99 price.

Bloggers and Twitterers lit up the Internet with posts about the offer, some insisting Best Buy must honor it, others making jokes.

Best Buy, based in Richfield, Minn., said it has corrected an online pricing error and will not honor the incorrect price. Orders made Wednesday morning at the incorrect price will be canceled and customers will receive refunds, the company said.

Best Buy did not immediately return a call for additional comment.

The Obama administration isn’t returning too many phone calls either, as people ask questions about Obama’s free medical care for the uninsured, Obama’s promise that healthcare coverage for those who have it won’t change, and Obama’s promise not to cut Medicare benefits while saving money.

Some things really ARE too good to be true.