Lil Wayne and New York Gun Laws: Which is Dumber?

So rapper Dwayne "Lil Wayne" Carter went to prison today for a year. His crime? Having a loaded .40 caliber handgun in his tour bus in Manhattan. Now, if this had happened in most other states, there would have been no law broken and no charges brought against Mr. Carter.

Don't get me wrong, Lil Wayne, Plaxico Burress, and anyone else (unless disqualified for previous crimes or mental defect) has access to legal means to possess (and carry) a handgun in New York City, so I'm not saying that these folks shouldn't be charged. I would just like to point out the glaring flaw in the system.

New York, especially New York City, has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. And yet, New York, especially New York City, also has some of the highest violent crime rates in the nation. Does anyone else think this is weird? Vermont, on the other hand, has some of the lowest violent crime rates in the nation. Now, this is obviously because Vermont has completely banned guns from within its borders, right? WRONG! In Vermont, anyone over 18 years of age (unless disqualified for previous crimes or mental defect) can carry a firearm on his or her person at all times. Does anyone else think this is weird, or am I taking crazy pills?

See, if you're the kind of person who is going to rob someone, are you more likely to do so in a place where it's difficult to possess a weapon, or in a place where it's very easy? Don't get me wrong, I'd love to live in a world where no one uses guns for violence, and then we can get in a big circle, hold hands, and sing "Kumbaya", but this is not the world we live in. If we ban guns, then only the outlaws have them. And, as it's been said before, "The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Please, feel free to fact check this post, and call me on anything I got wrong. I'm always up for respectful debate.

A Modest Proposal 2008

So I just saw "The Day the Earth Stood Still" last night. It wasn't bad, but it also wasn't great. One thing that it was, though, was blatantly environmentalist. Not a big deal, just ended up making things quite corny. On multiple occasions, Jennifer Connelly said "we can change" and I half expected her to say "we'll start using energy efficient light bulbs" or "we'll all drive hybrid cars".
Which brings me to my reason for posting.
A big topic today in environmentalism is water and conservation of fresh water resources. I hear people talking all the time about "wasting" water. Every time I hear someone mention the "wasting" of water I'd think (or sometimes, say aloud), "you can't waste water, it's 100% renewable". If you think about it, the Earth is essentially a closed system. Nothing (save for some spacecraft) ever leaves the atmosphere, so you really can't waste water.
And then, one day, it hit me.
During our evolution as humans, we've started doing a large number of different things for various reasons that don't make sense from an environmental standpoint. You can probably think of any number of them just off the top of your head. But there's one thing that I bet you wouldn't think about, and it's a tremendous waste of resources with an extreme lack of reasoning behind it.
I think we need to change our burial practices. Today, in the United States and many other industrialized nations, human corpses are embalmed to preserve them, placed in a casket (which is usually elaborate and expensive), which is then encased in concrete, or something of the sort, which is then buried 6 feet under the surface. Could this make less sense environmentally?
Now, back in the day, say a hundred or so years ago, corpses were buried in simple caskets and were either not well preserved or not preserved at all. This practice allowed the wood and the corpse to decompose underground naturally, and all those nutrients were returned to the Earth, from which they came. However, with our current practices, it could take decades or even centuries for the concrete, fancy casket, and embalmed corpse to decompose.
I think we should go back to the old way, simple wooden box and unpreserved corpse. Is it really necessary to have the corpse present at the funeral? Personally, I'd rather not look at dead persons, and instead think about them when they were alive.

IRONMAN: A Review

Just saw a special advance screening of Ironman, and I won't give anything away. But I will still review the movie.
It was, in a word, awesome.
The script was solid for a superhero flick, and the acting was perfectly executed. Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow had good chemistry, and Terrence Howard was a good addition to the cast.
The action sequences were realistic, and the building of "Ironman" was realistically mega high tech.
In short, (as if it weren't short enough already), see this movie. It's everything you'd expect from a summer superhero movie, and then some.

Mobile

I can do mobile blogging now! How exciting!

Downtown Columbus and the Metropolitan Library

Today Varment Guard came to my apartment (and everyone else's in my complex) to look/spray for bed bugs. I'm pretty sure they didn't find anything in my apartment, but, nevertheless, since I didn't work today, I was forced to leave my apartment and kill three hours. So I decided to make my first visit to the Columbus Metropolitan Library downtown. It was a really nice place, but it did appear that it's the daytime hang out of more than a few homeless people.
Here's the weird part. I walked in through the parking garage, then looked at the map of the building. Something (I can't remember what) caught my eye on the third floor, so I made my way there. Having never been there before, I was truly wandering, and, before I knew it, I was suddenly surrounded by geology books. And not just geology, but some of my other interests, including biology, physics, and astronomy. It was as if I was just drawn there. Very strange.
So after looking around for a little bit, I asked someone about a book I was interested in, and they told me there was a month long waiting list for it. I was also informed that if my ID doesn't have my current address on it (mine doesn't), I'd have to bring a copy of a utility bill, or something like it, to get a library card. I'll probably do this later this week, since it doesn't look like I'll be working much. I sat around for another hour, thumbing through two of the more interesting looking geology books, then I left.
I decided to go up to the short north area for lunch, and in the process of looking for a good place, I did a little sightseeing at the skyscrapers downtown. Downtown Columbus is a cool place, with lots of interesting and impressive architecture. So after a little searching, I found "Mac's Cafe". I had a reuben with french fries. They sure know how to make a reuben at Mac's. I paid my bill and left, then headed back to my apartment.
Not a very exciting post, but ya gotta start somewhere right?