I think this is one of those idealistic arguments that ignores reality. The logic of the argument must be along the lines of the second amendment grants the right to bear arms with a dash of “innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”^* Ignoring that courts have already ruled that the rights of individuals can be taken away for the protection of the greater public (e.g., you can’t yell “fire” or “bomb” in a crowded theater to exercise your freedom of speech), I still have to wonder about the additional logic. I’ve come up with a few possibilities:

• While incredibly drunk, armed people will exhibit the excellent judgment to not take out their firearms during a fight
• When a dangerous situation does break out, the average “buzzing” hero will be able to shoot someone else in the face to save everyone (this works especially well with the idea of “innocent until proven guilty in a court of law”)
• People will be too drunk to be able to even use their guns
• The dumb people will begin to eliminate themselves

I don’t know; I must be missing something. We recognize that intoxication + car = bad, so why not recognize that intoxication + gun = bad? I hear the argument that people have to get permits to carry guns, blah blah; you have to get a license to drive and yet sober people still cause deadly car accidents every single day.

Besides, as far as I am concerned, the second amendment grants me the right to own a nuclear weapon. Now I can take my suitcase nuke to the bar with me when I visit Tennessee!

^*Please note that it is okay to not grant this right to people we have not given a trial to but whom we suspect have done bad things.

But wait, the next line is the one that gets me: “The nine troopers have been on paid leave since Oct. 13“. Moral of the story: scam the government by buying a bogus degree and get both a pay increase and a 2+ month paid vacation!

US courts routinely offer millions in compensation to citizens who do stupid things, but Germany has taken the opposite approach. According to the news story, a man was having brain surgery and became the unfortunate victim of a faulty fridge. The top of his skull “spoiled” and had to be replaced. Courts awarded him $4,100. If he had been in the US, they would have added another three zeros on there.

“You lost part of your skull? That’s nothing! *I* had to deal with hot coffee!”

The article says: The ride will remain closed until a full investigation by state officials and “our team of experts” is conducted, McLean said. I’m not sure if she used air-quotes or if CNN does not have a whole lot of confidence in the team of experts. I think they really are experts; how much knowledge does it take to say, “Yup, broken cord. Yup, it’s bloody. Yup, girl lost her feet. Well Jim, I think this here ride’s broken!”

Hopefully the girl wins a few million in lawsuits.

Having quite a bit of experience with electronics, I instantly think, “iPods use very little power and don’t use electromagnetic fields for transmission, this is bogus. Any pacemaker has to be made with enough shielding to prevent interference from such a device…” And yes, my thoughts to contain ellipses.

This isn’t a site I read regularly (it just popped up on my “iGoogle” page), so I was not sure how believable it would be. Then I saw ads that interfered with the content and knew it couldn’t be too reliable. After that, I read this paragraph:

More pointedly, according to a study carried out by Jay Thaker, a 17-year-old high school student, which was presented to a selection of heart specialists yesterday, close proximity to an iPod can trigger monitoring malfunctions in cardiac pacemakers due to electromagnetic interference.

I figure the student must be intelligent enough to know that such claims without data would be enough to give him the .2 seconds of fame that it takes for me to forget his name, so maybe he did some real work. And then I read this gem:

The study was conducted at the Thoracic and Cardiovascular Institute at Michigan State University across 100 patients with an average age of 77, all equipped with implanted pacemaker devices. Thaker’s somewhat worrying results (which only focused on the iPod, and not the effects of other digital portable music players), were presented on Thursday at the annual meeting off the Heart Rhythm Society in Denver, Colorado.

“Uh, yeah, I’d like to do a study to see if I can make your life-saving device fail. Sign here if you don’t want to partake in this potentially deadly study. What’s that? You aren’t very mobile? Well, I guess you can’t sign the ‘Please do not kill me’ form.” Pacemakers basically monitor the heart’s natural electrical rhythm and give the heart a jolt when the rhythm fails. Obviously, they’re much more complex than that, so I would think that they would have at least some shielding to prevent interference. Of course, I think logically, which is always wrong.

I just wonder about the person whose pacemaker failed because of the study. Does he have to have an operation to have a new one installed? Will his new one regulate his heart and play music? Will it regulate his heart to the beat of the music he is listening to? If so, can he listen to music with a fast beat when he is excited and Enya when he is ready to die?

What’s the story behind the first car that hit him? Did the driver not notice? Did s/he speed away? What about the driver of the second car that hit him and dragged him half of a mile? Should she even be allowed to drive? Her story is that she thought she hit a piece of cardboard. Yeah, cardboard, human body, same thing. She’s definitely the kind of person who would get a flat tire, think “Wow, my car sure is pulling hard to one side,” and then not stop until she got to her destination and finally someone could tell her that she drove for 60 miles on a flat tire. I can’t imagine what would have happened if someone hadn’t told the lady that she was dragging a body around under her car… She would probably get home and think, “Hmm, I smell bacon,” and then go back to the store…

No charges had been filed, but, unless the soldier jumped out of the bushes into the street, I would hope the police are going after the first person to hit him and really investigating the lady who hit him after that.

Fox News Perspective – link
The Fox article is called, “Charges dropped, but questions remain,” which by itself isn’t really terrible (though the SI version of the AP article is titled “Duke rape charges dropped” and subtitled “Lacrosse players face kidnap, sexual offense charges”—notice that straight forward, non-suspicious tone). Then you read paragraphs like this on Fox’s article:

But the fact that the accuser is no longer certain she was penetrated in the alleged assault at a Duke team party last March doesn’t mean it’s time to paint her as a fraud, and to cast the accused as three student-athletes who were horribly wronged.

The charges of kidnapping and sexual offense still stand against the Duke players. Last time I checked, kidnapping and sexual offense were heinous crimes.

Okay, she’s only changed her story dozens of times and they have no physical proof (all the DNA results showed none of the defendants’ DNA), but we assume she isn’t a liar. That’s fair enough. Yet, the second paragraph makes it sound like we should assume the crimes were committed. Screw presumption of innocence! They’re guilty because the prosecutor said so based entirely on shifting claims by the “victim.” Come on, Fox News, report the news, don’t change it.

This case still has to play itself out. All we know for sure right now is this: The Duke coach lost his career, the Duke players lost their season, and everyone involved in the case lost their innocence.

That’s all we know, according to Fox. The coach resigned (which to them means he lost his career), and there is no mention that we know that the “victim” has changed her story many times!

Differences in Stories
I read the AP story on Fox also… and realized it was a lot like the one I read on SI… but not quite the same. For example, this paragraph was in the SI version and not the Fox version:

In recent months, Nifong has been vilified by some lawyers and members of the community for pressing ahead with what appeared to many to be a remarkably weak case.

Fox News:

SI:

Of course, that just makes the prosecutor sound weak, which would mean Fox’s perspective of the players being guilty wouldn’t make too much sense, so that was not included in their version. The next portion omitted from Fox’s version has the sentences, as explained by the defending attorney, and another paragraph saying how weak the case is.

A defendant’s prior criminal record affects the length of a prison sentence in North Carolina. In the case of the three indicted players, Cheshire said rape and sexual offense carry the same possible sentence of up to 24 years in prison, while kidnapping is punishable by up to seven years.

“There’s not a spider web of evidence supporting the allegations of Mr. Nifong,” said Wade Smith, one of the players’ attorneys. “We’ve waited and there hasn’t been anything. … We have this bare assertion and nothing else.”

Rather than just omitting this part, Fox included a different paragraph with far longer sentences (because these guilty guys need to go behind bars!):

Rape and sexual offense carry the same possible sentence of up to 40 years in prison, while kidnapping is punishable by up to 17 1/2 years.

Fox News:

SI:

I’m not saying the Duke players are guilty or not guilty. I’m just pointing out the differences between stories… even ones that claim to come from the same source… Anyone know if you are allowed to rewrite portions of AP stories with no notice?

In case you are curious, the Associated Press version of the article is the same as the SI version.