Random Thoughts From Marybeth

It Doesn't Match Any of the Definitions in My Dictionary

FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.

A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.

Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.”

If they are considered "insurgents", does this the sailors and marines will have the full support of the media? Or is that only if you're an "insurgent" that's trying to kill Americans?

Japanese Culture in Lebanon

Today we went to Japanese Cultural Day in Lebanon, KY. We arrived later than I had planned, both because of a late start and poor directions on the website. (It says to take a left turn at one point where we needed to turn right.)

We saw a koto performance.

Jeff and Emma participated in the chopsticks contest. The object was to see how many M&Ms you could move from one plate to another in 60 seconds.

Because we were late we missed some of the performances that I had wanted to see and missed trying any of the food we will have the opportunity to sample some Japanese food later - I won a gift certificate for dinner for two at Tomo in Lexington. A bit earlier during the doorprize drawing someone who I think was from Lexington won a gift certificate to a restaurant in Louisville. I should have tried to find him and ask if he wanted to trade...not because Tomo doesn't sound good but because going to a restaurant in our own cities would have been more convenient.

Location, Location, Location

I spend some of my time online reviewing websites for JoeAnt. The majority of the sites I look at are nice - clean and easy to navigate. A few sites are outstanding and a few are virtually worthless - either through poor design or lack of content.

Among the ones that make up the majority there are some that do one of two things that is really beginning to bug me. Both occur on business sites. The first is when the site announces that they deliver/sell/provide a service nationwide...only you have to search to find what nation it is.

The second is one I see with local businesses that are trying to attract new customers in their area. At least I would have thought that is what the site was for but I'm not sure when they make it difficult to find what the address of the business is. There was one recently that didn't even have the location on the "contact" page. I can't remember now where I finally found it but I remember spending more time than I should have had to finding it.

If you provide a product or service to a specific area, whether it's a city or a country, this information should be obvious to anyone viewing the site. Even if you don't have the full address on the opening page, at least refer to the area you serve in the text on that page. This not only will make your site more viewer-friendly but will also help people who are using search engines to find a product/service in a particular area more likely to find you.

Cute, Little, and Loud (No I'm Not Writing About When My Children Were Toddlers)

I had really planned on waiting a bit longer before I went gun shopping again. I also had thought that when I did decide to buy my next gun that it would be a revolver. Wrong on both counts.

I started thinking (this always gets me into trouble) that a gun that was small and as comfortable to hold as my Walther P22 but went BOOM like the S&W MP .40 would be just the right combination. So I started looking online for guns that were recommended for people with small hands. I read some good reviews of the Springfield XD and decided to check it out.

Last Friday, I went to the gun store (Shooter's Supply) and told the salesman what I wanted to see. He asked if it would be a defensive weapon and I said that that was a good possibility. He then tried to talk me into buying a revolver.

His reasons for suggesting a revolver instead of a semi auto were ones I have heard before - mostly having to do with reliability. There are very few times in my life where I have felt that I was treated differently because I'm female but this was one that made me wonder, if a man came in asking to see a specific gun, would they try and sell him something completely different?

If I were just slightly less interested in the XD I would have told him that he's absolutely right and that there was a revolver for sale at OpenRange that I've had my eye on and that he just convinced me to go buy it. Instead I let him show me a couple of revolvers, told him they were nice and asked to see the .40 XD (he had already shown me the 9mm).

Another thing he did that annoyed me was when he checked the guns to make sure there were no rounds in them before handing it to me, he didn't turn it so that I could see also. Maybe this is nitpicky but when I look at the ones OpenRange has, the person showing me the guns lets me (and anyone else who's with me) see that there is no ammunition in it. I like this from both a safety and a courtesy standpoint.

I would have gotten it from OpenRange but when I looked online it said that the one I wanted was allocated and since I hadn't seen one in person, I didn't want to ask them to try and order one if I wasn't sure I wanted to buy it. They had already ordered one gun that I thought I might be interested in but didn't end up buying and I hated to risk doing that again.

Anyway, I did end up getting the XD and today I went to the range to try it out. It's lovely. Such a cute, little gun with such a big boom. It's comfortable to hold and while there's some kick to it, it's not anything that I can't handle. I tried shooting several rounds rapidly and managed to get them in my target's circle area so I'm thinking that with more practice this may become my first choice for a defensive weapon.

There a a couple of bonuses that came with the gun that I really like. One is a magazine loader. My fingers still aren't strong enough to load more than the first couple rounds in a magazine so this is a big help to me. (It also comes with a belt holster and a double magazine holder but I doubt I'll get much use out of either of those.)

The second thing that I considered to be a bonus was a sticker on the case that says, "Not Legal in California". That sticker alone is almost worth the price of the gun.

It's not the gun that's illegal, it's that it comes with a "high capacity" magazine. They define this "as any ammunition feeding device with the capacity to accept more than ten rounds". I've been trying to figure out what makes the last two rounds more dangerous than the first ten but I'm at a loss.

By His Logic...

Yesterday Michelle Malkin blogged about a columnist who published a list of concealed carry permit holders. The column included this as a reason for sharing this information - "Because the government handles the permitting, it is everyone's business."

If the fact that there is government involvement makes the list worth publishing, I'm looking forward to newspaper publishing a list of all the state's citizens who receive some type of government aid. The people have a right to know!

Better Living Through Parody

There is something about the way drug companies market to consumers - commercials on TV and ads in magazines - that I find disturbing. While I like the idea of information about drugs being easily available, the marketing of the drugs to potential patients seems to be as much selling the disease as it is selling the cure.

This parody site for Havidol sums it all up perfectly.

HAVIDOL is for the treatment of Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD). It is the only known medication available for this newly recognized disorder.

My Fame Continues

The "ladies meet and shoot" that was featured on a WHAS TV news story is available on the OpenRange website.

It reminds me that I need to get over there and do some practicing. Between the kids having the flu and my tendency to want to hibernate all winter, I haven't done any shooting in at least a couple of weeks. I need to keep up/improve my skills. It is also, contrary to what I would have thought before, both relaxing and mentally rejuvenating. I think of my time on the range as my "meditation time".

It's also been almost a month since I bought a new gun and I'm starting to get the itch to go shopping again.

Wasting Time, Money, and Human Resources...For What?

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay personnel to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported.

I don't understand why anything other than a combination of a desire to serve and the ability to serve should be considered when someone joins the military. One person's opinion on what is immoral shouldn't have any weight in the matter, otherwise, shouldn't we have to consider all those who think that killing is immoral? Take away the ability to defend themselves and the military would be as useful as the UN peacekeeping troops.

If the military's concern has to do with wanting to prevent "unacceptable behavior" among the troops, then it seems the policies that are already in place to govern the behavior of men and women serving together would cover that. Not that I would expect any more (or fewer) problems with unwanted advances or inappropriate relationships among gay service people than there already is in the military now.

Not accepting people simply because of their sexual orientation is a waste of resources and not taking advantage of all that is available to you is a poor way to run any organization, including the military.

(Link via GayandRight)

Lost and Found

My family calls me a finder. They lose things, swear they have looked everywhere possible, and whatever it is that's missing is gone, gone, gone forever. More often than not I find it. Usually within a few minutes of beginning the search.

I once asked, if this makes me a finder, does their persistance in losing things make them losers? They weren't amused. I didn't mean it in a bad way and it seemed like a logical question.

While I don't claim to have an eidetic memory, I do think I must have a better than average (at least for my household) ability to remember where I saw an object. I think of it as a learned survival skill since none of us are especially well organized. That, combined with questions about where they were when they last remember having the missing object (while they insist they already looked in that area), usually results in me finding what they lost.

Maybe I should have encouraged them to do more of the Highlight's Hidden Pictures when they were younger. Because, really, finding things is mostly a matter of observation. And a willingness to actually look for something...including looking under and around other things (especially in a house with kids and cats...the first piles things on top of other things, the second knocks them down).

All She Knows About Polar Bears She Learned From Coke Commercials

Don't discuss polar bears, scientists told

Someone should have told that to a public radio news reporter that I heard refer to polar bears as "fuzzy, white preditors". Maybe it was the "fuzzy" bit but it sounded more like she was talking about Snowball the kitten than about polar bears.

A Promise

A promise that the total suck that is winter will soon be over.

Spirits Not That Tuned In To Reality

Some conservatives think the president is too easy on illegal immigration but it seems the Mayan spirit guides have another opinion.

'That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,' Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

...Tiney said the 'spirit guides of the Mayan community' decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of 'bad spirits' after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace.

If they are really interested in cleaning, here's a project for them.

Life's Real Mysteries

New Scientist has a list of 13 Things That Don't Make Sense. My personal list of things that don't make sense is much longer but it's not limited to things that lack a scientific explanation. Who has time to ponder dark matter when you're busy trying to figure out how people who can make complex creations out of Legos or K'nex can't manage the mechanics of changing the toilet paper roll? Why does one out of every pair of socks go missing? And how did footprints get on the ceiling?

I Don't See It on the NYT's Bestseller List

A letter to the editors of American Scientist regarding a recent column had this sentence:

Gödel's undecidability theorem isn't a bunker-buster as so much popular literature claims.

I understand what the letter writer meant but when I first read it the combination of "popular literature" and a mathematical theorem made me laugh.