Who Knows
Just a little life
So, it’s been awhile since I got on here and wrote anything. Life has a way of requiring my time in other pursuits. School took a LOT of my time last semester, programming may be fun (especially when I figure out how to solve a problem) but boy does it take a lot of time and effort! I took the summer off to spend with family and a (fairly) new relationship but now I am preparing to dive into a new semester at school with the next step in computer programming.
And just like that, another two years passes with nary a word from me. The first paragraph was started and left as a draft back in 2016 and I am just now getting back to it. In that time, I have continued school and I am currently one and a half semesters away from my degree in computer programming. We have had significant changes at work that have me putting in more hours than ever before. My youngest daughter got married and started on her life path. My oldest daughter has completed her degree and entered the workforce. And I married the woman in the ‘fairly new relationship’ I mentioned above.
I am in the middle of a semester so I can’t say how long before my next post appears but I hope to get back here more frequently and begin hashing out what I really want this blog to be about.
Hope to see somebody following this as I start posting again.
Current Topic Discussion
So, once again I have been absent on here and left things too quiet for too long. As part of a class I am taking I have been given a topic question to offer my opinion and collect discussion from classmates. I got to thinking, why keep all that fun to just the class?
The topic is the Black Lives Matter movement and the question posed was ‘Does This Movement Create Racial Divide in The Country?’
I want to hear what anyone inclined and willing to comment has to say on this.
*REMINDER* Keep it civil and respectful of ALL posts and opinions please!
A new Star-Trek tv series is coming
Yes, I am a Star-Trek fan. I read a few days ago that CBS is working on a new Star-Trek series due out in 2017. I haven’t seen anything at all to indicate what it will be about but I truly hope it doesn’t suck! What I read did say that the series premiere would be on broadcast tv but move to CBS All Access for the rest of the series. I read up on All Access and it doesn’t look very good. Granted a lot of what I read were older posts but man they were overwhelmingly negative towards the service. I only hope that CBS has the bugs worked out by the time this new Star-Trek joins their lineup.
While we are talking Star-Trek, I wonder what ST series was your favorite? I definitely lean towards Enterprise as my favorite. I think because the humans aren’t so ‘perfect’. Their first reaction isn’t always the proper and acceptably PC response. They often have to stop themselves and think for a minute to come up with a less reactionary and more even reaction.
What do you think?
Gun Control
When will people wake up and figure out that passing more gun control laws, or stricter gun control laws will only have an impact on those who actually choose to follow the law. Think about it, isn’t it already illegal to kill people? Aren’t the laws concerning murder pretty well established? Is there something ambiguous about the our laws against murder? I think most will agree that we have made it pretty clear that murder is illegal, and yet we see it happen every day. We see it with guns, true, but also with knives, baseball bats, pipe, cars, even bare hands.
I started this post right after the tragedy in Oregon and saw gun control advocates start in with the ‘if there was less access to guns this wouldn’t happen’ posts. I also saw numerous counter-arguments saying ‘if guns were allowed on school campuses the shooter could have been dealt with more quickly or wouldn’t have felt so safe staging his attack’. I will admit (if you can’t already tell) I lean towards the latter argument. I do not believe that making guns more difficult for anyone to acquire will solve the problem of murder by firearm.
As I stated in the opening, murder is against the law and typically comes with a pretty severe punishment and is normally vigorously investigated and prosecuted and pretty much everyone knows this. And yet, we see murders committed every single day, why? Because criminals have no regard for the law, little care for the life, or lives, they wish to take, and no concern or thought for the inevitable pursuit and prosecution by law enforcement. With this attitude in criminals, why would anyone think that making it more difficult to buy a gun would in any way inhibit said criminal?
I do believe that laws that apply to purchasing a firearm through a gun shop should apply to anyone selling and buying a firearm. When purchasing a gun at a gun show, the same background check and requirements should apply as purchasing at the storefront. Of course, the government needs to get serious about providing the promised real-time lookup of criminal and psychiatric records. It won’t matter if background checks are enforced across the board if the system utilized to make these evaluations is broken, as it is currently. Passing more restrictive gun laws will not fix this problem any more than further restricting murder would have any impact on the murder rate. Yes, close any loophole that allows a gun to be purchased without a reasonably thorough background check but I don’t think for a second that doing so will have any significant effect on murder rates.
I lean towards mandatory training covering the proper use, care and respect for handling a firearm. In many of the accidental deaths, a total lack of respect for firearms seems to have led to complacency in gun safety. Mandatory training could save many lives lost. By keeping guns out of the reach of toddlers and children who have no idea the danger involved, we could avert many accidental deaths.
I also believe that ‘gun free zones’ encourage, almost beg, criminals to plan and carry out their attacks in these places. Coincidentally, these are also places of high concentrations of now defenseless targets. Why is it a surprise that someone looking to commit murder would do so in an environment that has lots of people and little to no chance of resistance?
Recently, today in fact, I read about the debate between allowing open carry or concealed carry on school grounds. That is a whole different discussion that I may take up at a later date.
First Opinion
So, lots of news today that I could comment on…. More calls for new gun laws after the tragic shootings in Oregon… renewed discussion around the separation of church and state because of the removal of the Ten Commandments from the Oklahoma state capitol… pretty much everything having to do with the presidential race… and one of my personal pet peeves, the reporting of all this news from various ‘news’ outlets.
What happened to the days when watching ‘the news’ meant you would actually get a report of what happened today? I mean when did we, as a society, get to the point that we need someone else to tell us what today’s happenings mean? Since when do we need someone else to tell us what we think about it, what we feel about it? Are we really so busy that we need the news interpreted, spun and pre-felt for us and just the essence of someone else’s understanding and emotional response to the news injected into us? Or is it something closer to just being too lazy to care enough about what is happening in our community, country and world to put forth the effort to make our own decisions and opinions? Perhaps it is just that we don’t care enough to have feelings anymore and need someone else to incite them in us?
For their part, many so-called news organizations have increasingly become little more than ad platforms designed and polished for the specific purpose of polarizing targeted groups and generating ever more valuable revenue streams and then selling their readers and viewers to the companies willing to pay for access to those consumers. We citizens have allowed these news outlets to increasingly take over the thinking part of taking in the news. They have realized that inflaming attitudes over an issue or event can create return viewers and we are more than happy to surrender the responsibility and privilege of creating our own well-informed and thoughtful opinions. We get on the internet or sit in front of our big screen televisions to take in our world and the complexities of our civilization in 10 to 15 second blurbs that are intentionally spat out to us in such a way as to make the ‘news’ fit a predetermined viewpoint. This robs us of – or perhaps saves us from – the ‘hassle’ of actually seeing and hearing the news and then making our own determination of relevance and meaning. Even if we hold the same opinion that our chosen news source is spinning, do we really need them to further inflame our attitudes and polarize us against any understanding of other views? I say ‘no’! But what THEY need is to get us more angry so that we keep coming back for more and, in that way, add value to their base.
I remember the days of “… and that’s the way it is…”, when the news was reported as ‘this is what happened today’ and not so much of the ‘here is how you will feel about this’ and definitely not the amount of effort that is exerted today to divide and polarize viewers and push them further towards the extremes. Thankfully, not all news sources are hell-bent on inflaming their viewers into ever more extreme and inflexible positions with every report they create. Find one or two of those sources and cling to them. Do your own thinking. Form your own opinions as objectively as you can. Challenge your own opinions and view points occasionally to make sure you are looking at all arguments and still arriving at the same conclusion. It is OK to discover that there was something you hadn’t considered in the past even if it causes you to change your position. Above all else, make sure that your opinions are your own and not just those of someone else.
I think that is all for this post. Thank you for making the effort to read this through and comment if you feel moved to do so.
TheCommonQuill
First Writings First
Well, this is the first of who knows how many times I will be writing in this blog, welcome. Hopefully this blog finds you healthy and in relatively good spirits.
I will be posting my thoughts and opinions on anything and everything that strikes me as comment-worthy and then we will see what comments appear and where the discussions go. I expect comments and replies to be thoughtful, civil and respectful of any and all opinions and viewpoints expressed here. I will try to ensure that disrespectful posts and personal attacks on my readers and contributors are removed and repeat offenders blocked. That being said, I will not remove posts simply because I, or a reader, disagree with the viewpoint or opinion expressed in the post.
Thank you for being here,
QuillHandler
quillhandler
The Common Quill 