Sorry for the lack of posting. I’ll catch up later.
UPDATE: Back from the dentist. The good news is that the cause of the problem was a filling that was too close to the nerve. That’s the reason I always had a lot of temperature sensitivity with that tooth. Dentist said it was just a matter of time before the nerve got irritated enough to become inflamed irreversibly. It’s good to know it wasn’t my fault, for not catching something sooner. That also explains the sudden onset, and rapid progression of pain. So I have a medicated filling, pain meds, and an antibiotic to deal with an infection that was getting started. That should get me through until I go for the scheduled root canal.
Normally I dread the novocaine needle, but this time I welcomed it, because I knew it would mean sweet, sweet relief. We’ll see how things go when it’s completely worn off, but being just about completely worn off, I already feel better. I want to thank Dr. James Beam, who’s prescription was the only way I made it through the weekend.
From Patrick Jonsson of the Christian Science Monitor. It’s a very realistic and very fair look at both sides of the debate. While fair and realistic can be boring sometimes, I think he takes a look at things to a deep enough degree to really grasp the depth and breadth of the gun culture, including the parts people don’t expect, like the transplant from New York to North Carolina, who is passionate about gun rights, to the native North Carolinian who is fairly ambivalent about guns.
You may have seen a brief mention in the news of a Hawaiian house being taken out by lava last week. Even though most of the mainland blurbs didn’t make it sound all that interesting, I have to admit that I think the background story is amazing.
Jack tells me he purchased his first lot there in 1972 on Queens Street in Royal Gardens; relocating to Plumeria Street residence in 1978. The subdivision contained 1500 lots on the Pulama Pali and coastal plains below. Jack likes telling the story about the day he was finishing the cedar house in early January 1983: Having just placed the windows into his upper loft bedroom, when that very night he saw an erie orange glow flashing on the panes– This glow was from huge lava fountains four miles upslope, he says this while waving his hands in the air like fountains, and was the very beginning of the eruption of Pu`u O`o January 3rd, 1983, which continues to this day.
Click to enlarge to see an ariel view of the isolated house from December 2011. He was putting that finishing touch on the house the day the eruption started and it took more than 29 years to bring the house down. For the last three years, he’s had to hike in and out. I read in an old article that for a number of years after the roads were cut off, he could still get in with a dirt bike. It’s amazing how much dedication he had staying put, but I can’t blame him. The views he had of a forested hill that overlooked a massive field of cooled lava that drops out into the ocean were nothing short of spectacular. I actually find the views of those fields to be the most beautiful on Hawaii.
According to other sources I’ve read, the first house in the subdivision was taken out by lava on March 20, 1983 – a little more than two months after the flow started. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory gives a clue as to what residents faced in those early years:
…from 1983-1985, `a`a flows fed by lava fountains from Pu`u `O`o overran the upper slopes of the subdivision during 7 eruptive episodes. Residents lived on edge in those years, when every 3-4 weeks towering lava fountains lit up the sky and rattled the windows. Sixteen houses were overrun, and 20 percent of the subdivision was inundated. Streets running straight down the pali formed convenient pathways for the `a`a flows, which filled them to a depth of 5-10 m (16-33 ft).
One former resident says she evacuated about 30 times during the time she tried to live amid the flow. To make matters worse, in 1987, their road to Hilo was cut off. Apparently, several purchased second cars to keep on the outside of the flow. They would drive to the end of the roads in their trapped subdivision, hike a mile, and then continue their drive with the second car to run their errands. A trip to Hilo was now a 120-mile round trip. If the “inside” car was parked too close to the flows, it would get overtaken between their trips outside of the subdivision – something that apparently happened often. Apparently, they would bulldoze access roads for the next 13 years, but those never lasted long. They would be overrun, with the last one being completely taken out in 2000.
Here is footage from Jack Thompson’s friend, a photographer who was with him when they had to evacuate.
Finding it difficult the past few days to concentrate on the blog. Several years ago I had a molar filled that was borderline root canal territory. It’s never been quite right since, with both pressure and cold sensitivity. I’ve always meant to get it taken care of, but I generally am the type of person that will avoid dentists if I can. About a week ago I get some pain in that tooth that wouldn’t go away. Now it’s more than a couple of ibuprofen can handle.
Some whiskey and a few ibuprofen get me to sleep, and while I’m sleeping I don’t seem to have much pain, but it’s off and on during the day, and when it’s on, it’s on. I’ve had bad cavities before that needed root canal, but this has been worse. I’m not getting any facial swelling so far, which is making me wonder if I cracked the tooth. Whatever it is, I’m getting to the dentist as soon as I can. I was hoping to hold off until the insurance kicked in, but I need relief now. Hopefully it’s not so bad, and a temporary medicated filling will fix me up until a root canal can be scheduled (with insurance). I’m not to keen on the idea of paying a molar root canal 100% out of pocket.
I’m getting way more experience with dental pain relief than I ever wanted. When I had my wisdom teeth out, I got Tylenol with hyrdocodone, which I didn’t find to be that much more effective than ibuprofen. I’ve generally found ibuprofen the best solution for dental pain. If you want to talk combination therapy that works well, but that your doctor will never recommend to you, ibuprofen and a three or so shots of whiskey is highly effective. Just make sure it’s ibuprofen and not Tylenol, which does bad things to your liver in combination with alcohol. This is very good at easing the pain, and anything you do feel through the buzz you don’t really care so much about :)
Better gun laws are not the only solution, but they are a big part of the answer. The sooner Americans understand that a nation where almost anyone can get his hands on a Soviet assault rifle is a nation where no one is safe, the better our chances of fixing the problem will be.
What evidence do they have that more gun laws are a big part of the answer? They don’t have any evidence. It just feels right to them, so it must be so. Pretty clearly the editorial board of the Toledo Blade that “almost anyone” can’t, in fact, get access to a Soviet era assault rifle. Those have been banned from importation since 1968.
I’m wondering whether I actually am still inhabiting the universe I thought I previously knew, or have somehow been transported into some other strange, parallel universe, where Pat Robertson signs on to decriminalizing weed.
It that’s the case, can I please also move to the universe where Ladd Everitt, Josh Horwitz, and Dennis Henigan are machine gun collectors?
As random voter registration drives get underway, I think this is a very well stated argument against mindlessly saying that any random voter participation is a good thing.
It’s all well and good to encourage eligible citizens to select who will govern them, but what chaps me is that nowhere in this get-out-the-vote fervor — which will only increase as November approaches — will we hear anyone suggest that before someone tramps to the voting booth, he ought to educate himself.
Educate himself about what? There’s plenty for that list. Economics. Public policy. The actual records of the actual candidates. Hell, the actual names of the candidates. All this would be an improvement over what the average student knows about history, politics, and most important, the principles that undergird freedom and prosperity.
It’s a curious position, vote-for-voting’s-sake, given that the same voices calling for it tend to favor insuring that students know in exquisite detail every possible birth control option available in the Western hemisphere. They recognize, in other words, that action in ignorance is inherently dangerous.
We were just commenting about this issue locally. In 2008, there was a line outside our polling place for the precincts that held various apartment complexes in the area. It filled the voting room, went down one somewhat short hall, filled a very long hallway, and then still left about 40 people outside. It seemed like the Obama get out the vote efforts were strong in those complexes. However, in any other national election, you’ll only see a short little line coming out of their voting area at the school. In the primaries and local/state-only elections, the room is close to empty. In other words, these aren’t people who are paying attention to elections or issues. They only show up sporadically when told to do so by someone else. We wonder how long the line will be for those precincts this year.
Here’s a thought experiment: imagine that, statistically speaking, whenever droves of students rushed to the polls, they pulled the lever for the candidate who most favors limited government. Does anyone for a hot half-second doubt that Mr. Sanchez, rather than brainstorming ways to make voting more like ordering a pizza, would instead want to treat it more like buying a handgun?
And that’s how we should at least to think about it, which is to say that we ought no more encourage someone who doesn’t know what the Constitution is to vote than we ought to give a chimpanzee a shotgun. In either case you’re not exactly sure what we’ll happen, but chances are it won’t be pretty.
Cox said the NRA isn’t waiting for the presidential election to get involved, turning to key Senate races to endorse pro-gun candidates even in primaries. Wednesday, for example, the powerful lobby backed Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock over Sen. Dick Lugar in the GOP primary. “The Supreme Court is certainly running in every Senate race in the country,†he told Secrets.
Looks like NRA wants to hedge its bets and try to improve the Senate in case we’re looking at another 4 years of Obama. I think the Senate is a weak check against Obama when it comes to court nominees, but any little bit can help. Lugar is not on any committees that could generally cause trouble for NRA, but he’d be quick to vote for cloture on a nominee who was just plainly unacceptable.
