Oklahoma Rising

If you plan on visiting Oklahoma or becoming an Oklahoman, there are a few things you should know that will help you adapt to the differences in lifestyles:

1. First, you need to learn our state song, Oklahoma!
2. If you run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a 12 pack of beer and a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.
3. Don't be surprised to find movie rentals, ammunition and bait in the same store. Do not buy food at this store.
4. Save all manner of bacon grease. You will be instructed later how to use it.
5. Remember, "ya'll" is singular, "all ya'll" is plural, and "all ya'll's" is plural possessive.
6. Get used to hearing "You ain't from around here, are ya?"
7. You may hear an Okie say "Ought!" to a dog or child. This is short for "Ya'll oughta not do that!" and is the equivalent of saying "No!"
8. Don't be worried at not understanding what people are saying. You’ll catch on. Just remember, they can't understand you either.
9. The first Okie expression to creep into a Yankee's vocabulary is the adjective "big'ol," as in "big'ol truck" or "big'ol boy." Most Yankees begin their Okie-influenced dialect this way. All of them are in denial about it.
10. The proper pronunciation you learned in school is no longer proper.
11. Be advised that "He needed killin" is a valid defense here.
12. If you hear an Okie exclaim, "Hey, ya'll, watch this," stay out of the way. These are likely to be the last words he'll ever say.
13. If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the smallest accumulation of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery store. It doesn't matter whether you need anything or not. You just have to go there.
14. Just because you can drive on snow and ice does not mean we can. Stay home the two days of the year it snows.
15. When you come up on a person driving 15 mph down the middle of the road, remember that most folks learn to drive on a John Deere, and that this is the proper speed and position for that vehicle.
16. Around here, we have found that the best way to grow a lush, green lawn is to pour gravel on it and call it a driveway.
17. Don't ever assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn.
18. The best gesture of solace for a neighbor who's got trouble is a plate of hot fried chicken and a big bowl of cold 'tater salad.
19. Do not be surprised to find that 10-year-olds own their own shotguns, they are proficient marksmen, and their mammas taught them how to aim.
20. It’s important to determine, in advance, where you will take shelter in a tornado. Then, when the storm whistle blows, run outside and look for the funnel.

Oklahoman's are some of the friendliest, most generous people you will ever meet. We welcome folks from all over the world to become "Okies" just like us!

(Thanks to Cowgirl357 for finding this video)

This Sums It Up Well

Emotional Vampirism
Tragedy becomes feeding time for the press.

By Jonah Goldberg

(from National Review Online)

I’m sick over the Virginia Tech story. But I’m sickened of the Virginia Tech “story.”

That is, it’s at moments like this — the “aftermath” stage of some horrible event — when the press, particularly television news networks, are most proud of themselves that I find them the most repellent.

To be sure, it’s difficult to see the line between enough and too much when journalists go wild, “flooding the zone,” competing with each other like starving dogs for the slightest new morsel of information they can then put on a permanent loop on cable TV, until the next fragmentary detail is pried loose by a reporter desperate to be first, for 15 minutes.

Because there isn’t enough new information to fill the infinite void allotted to these stories, the press quickly succumbs to a kind of emotional vampirism, feeding off the grief, fear, and anguish of victims clearly incapable of understanding their own feelings or of finding meaning in events that defy either understanding or meaning.

Just as with the Columbine massacre, the Oklahoma City bombing and countless other slaughters whose names tug at our memories - as well as our guilty consciences because we cannot quite recall the details of those “unforgettable” events - we can be sure the media will continue to milk their role as remorse voluptuaries for as long as conceivably possible.

You see, Americans don’t watch news that much anymore, preferring Oprah, The View, Grey’s Anatomy, and other soap operas fictional or otherwise. So long after the shelf life of the facts has expired and the news is no longer new, the networks will try to keep their swollen ratings by making their “extended coverage” as engorged with mawkish sentimentality as possible before giving way entirely to recriminations, self-congratulation and navel-gazing about how they handled this latest challenge.

Perhaps just as gruesome is the race to assign a politically palatable meaning to the calamity before the clay of first impressions hardens into the granite of conventional wisdom. After all, we must have a controversy over this event; how else to justify the return of the pundits, like an aristocracy in exile, to television studios everywhere?

Most prominently, some of these journalistic first-responders are desperate to seize on the opportunity to make Cho Seung-Hui into a gargoyle of the gun culture. Others see the contesting forces of litigiousness, the shortcomings of the therapeutic society or, just peeking around the corner, the horrible influences of the popular culture and the Internet. Had Cho’s visa been out of order, one can be sure some would have added Cho to the parade of horribles of illegal immigration.

And then, of course, there is religion. Some are desperate to insinuate Cho as a deranged warrior for Christ. But Cho had “Ismail Ax” written in red ink on his arm. Ismail is the Muslim spelling of Ishmael, which has caused others to speculate that Cho was another Johnny Taliban. But then, he spelled the name Ishmael — the common Western spelling — on the return address of the package he sent to NBC.

That package also contained a multimedia suicide note in which Cho both denounced Christianity and put himself in the role of Jesus Christ, even as he struck a mimicking pose possibly lifted from a Korean action movie and carried on like one of the professional wrestlers he so admired.

His execrable writings contain countless allusions to pedophilia and abuse so offensive that even his presumably sophisticatedly desensitized classmates refused to read them. His video testimony contains quasi-Marxist denunciations of materialism.

In short, this deranged young man had a maelstrom of demons swirling about him. But partisans want us to pick one all-explanatory demon.

With the light of hindsight, some say the warning signs should have been spotted. But this assumes that strange and disgruntled people are a rarity and that all of them are candidates to become mass murderers. The reality is almost exactly the opposite. Strange minds and tortured souls are all around us, particularly on college campuses.

Shall we now have the psychological equivalent of the zero-tolerance mania that causes children with aspirin to be carted off by police? Shall we unleash the white coats on every misanthrope and muttering grudge holder?

I confess, I’ve played the game of trying to find meaning in tragedy more than once myself and I probably will again. But not this time. Not with Cho. The only meaning I can find supported by the horrific, heartrending evidence is that once again the mystery of evil has been corroborated, the permanence of tragedy confirmed.

© 2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Gun Control Means Hitting What You Aim At...

The recent tragic events at VT have fanned the flames of those who would disarm the American public. How can anyone reasonably believe that laws against owing a gun would stop anyone bent on the kind of mass murder that occurred. Surely, someone who intends to violate the laws of man and God against murder would have little compunction in violating a law forbidding the possession of a firearm. If there had been others there, legally armed and properly trained, someone could have stopped him before so many were killed.

I found the following on Jeff's blog. Thanks, Jeff.

(By the way, the picture above is a Baby Eagle. My .40 caliber version of this little jewel lives in my bedroom.)

From Concealed Carry Magazines e-newsletter a few months back...

40 Reasons For Gun Control



1. Banning guns works, which is why New York, DC, & Chicago cops need guns.



2. Washington DC's low murder rate of 69 per 100,000 is due to strict gun control, and Indianapolis' high murder rate of 9 per 100,000 is due to the lack of gun control.



3. Statistics showing high murder rates justify gun control but statistics showing increasing murder rates after gun control are "just statistics."



4. The Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban, both of which went into effect in 1994 are responsible for the decrease in violent crime rates, which have been declining since 1991.



5. We must get rid of guns because a deranged lunatic may go on a shooting spree at any time and anyone who would own a gun out of fear of such a lunatic is paranoid.



6. The more helpless you are the safer you are from criminals.



7. An intruder will be incapacitated by tear gas or oven spray, but if shot with a .357 Magnum will get angry and kill you.



8. A woman raped and strangled is morally superior to a woman with a smoking gun and a dead rapist at her feet.



9. When confronted by violent criminals, you should "put up no defense- give them what they want, or run" (Handgun Control Inc. Chairman Pete Shields, Guns Don't Die - People Do, 1981, p.125).



10. The New England Journal of Medicine is filled with expert advice about guns; just like Guns & Ammo has some excellent treatises on heart surgery.



11. One should consult an automotive engineer for safer seatbelts, a civil engineer for a better bridge, a surgeon for internal medicine, a computer programmer for hard drive problems, and Sarah Brady for firearms expertise.



12. The 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1787, refers to the National Guard, which was created 130 years later, in 1917.



13. The National Guard, federally funded, with bases on federal land, using federally-owned weapons vehicles buildings and uniforms, punishing trespassers under federal law, is a "state" militia.



14. These phrases: "right of the people peaceably to assemble," "right of the people to be secure in their homes," "enumerations herein of certain rights shall not be construed to disparage others retained by the people," and "The powers not delegated herein are reserved to the states respectively, and to the people" all refer to individuals, but "the right of the people to keep and bear arm" refers to the state.



15. "The Constitution is strong and will never change." But we should ban and seize all guns thereby violating the 2nd, 4th, and 5thAmendments to that Constitution.



16. Rifles and handguns aren't necessary to national defense! Of course, the army has hundreds of thousands of them.



17. Private citizens shouldn't have handguns, because they aren't "military weapons", but private citizens shouldn't have "assault rifles", because they are military weapons.



18. In spite of waiting periods, background checks, finger printing, government forms, etc., guns today are too readily available, which is responsible for recent school shootings. In the 1940's, 1950's and1960's, anyone could buy guns at hardware stores, army surplus stores, gas stations, variety stores, Sears mail order, no waiting, no background check, no fingerprints, no government forms and there were no school shootings.



19. The NRA's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign about kids handling guns is propaganda, but the anti-gun lobby's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign is responsible social activity.



20. Guns are so complex that special training is necessary to use them properly, and so simple to use that they make murder easy.



21. A handgun, with up to 4 controls, is far too complex for the typical adult to learn to use, as opposed to an automobile that only has 20.



22. Women are just as intelligent and capable as men but a woman with a gun is "an accident waiting to happen" and gun makers' advertisements aimed at women are "preying on their fears."



23. Ordinary people in the presence of guns turn into slaughtering butchers but revert to normal when the weapon is removed.



24. Guns cause violence, which is why there are so many mass killings at gun shows.



25. A majority of the population supports gun control, just like a majority of the population supported owning slaves.



26. Any self-loading small arm can legitimately be considered to be a "weapon of mass destruction" or an "assault weapon."



27. Most people can't be trusted, so we should have laws against guns, which most people will abide by because they can be trusted.



28. The right of Internet pornographers to exist cannot be questioned because it is constitutionally protected by the Bill of Rights, but the use of handguns for self defense is not really protected by the Bill of Rights.



29. Free speech entitles one to own newspapers, transmitters, computers, and typewriters, but self-defense only justifies bare hands.



30. The ACLU is good because it uncompromisingly defends certain parts of the Constitution, and the NRA is bad, because it defends other parts of the Constitution.



31. Charlton Heston, a movie actor as president of the NRA is a cheap lunatic who should be ignored, but Michael Douglas, a movie actor as a representative of Handgun Control, Inc. is an ambassador for peace who is entitled to an audience at the UN arms control summit.



32. Police operate with backup within groups, which is why they need larger capacity pistol magazines than do "civilians" who must face criminals alone and therefore need less ammunition.



33. We should ban "Saturday Night Specials" and other inexpensive guns because it's not fair that poor people have access to guns too.



34. Police officers have some special Jedi-like mastery over hand guns that private citizens can never hope to obtain.



35. Private citizens don't need a gun for self-protection because the police are there to protect them even though the Supreme Court says the police are not responsible for their protection.



36. Citizens don't need to carry a gun for personal protection but police chiefs, who are desk-bound administrators who work in a building filled with cops, need a gun.



37. "Assault weapons" have no purpose other than to kill large numbers of people. The police need assault weapons. You do not.



38. When Microsoft pressures its distributors to give Microsoft preferential promotion, that's bad; but when the Federal government pressures cities to buy guns only from Smith & Wesson, that's good.



39. Trigger locks do not interfere with the ability to use a gun for defensive purposes, which is why you see police officers with one on their duty weapon.



40. Handgun Control, Inc. says they want to "keep guns out of the wrong hands." Guess what? You have the wrong hands.



Significant portions of this article are excerpted from Michael Z. Williamson's excellent and witty piece, "It's amazing what one has to believe to believe in gun control"

And Now, For Something Entirely Different...

I can't remember the first time I made a Mobius strip (well, a representation of one, anyway), or how I learned about them. The whole idea just fascinated me and I spent a fair amount of time cutting strips of paper to fashion into that simple, twisted loop. I believe I first read the following poem in one of Isaac Asimov's essay collections. I never forgot it. When my children were young, I used to recite this little poem to them, and I taught them about the Mobius strip. Then I had to contend with my kids cutting any paper they could find into long, thin strips as I had done at about the same age. I can hardly wait until my grand kids are old enough to do the same thing. Anyway, here is the poem. I have no idea where it originated....(yeah, I know, I'm weird. I've never claimed any different!)

Flappity, Floppity, Flip!
The mouse on the Möbius Strip.
The strip revolved,
The mouse dissolved, In a chronodimensional skip!