P-H-A-T Fat (as in Tuesday)

Just dawned on me that it is Fat Tuesday. Time to start drinking.

All hopped up

Hoppy brew before Pink Martini at the Shriners hall in Indy. Hoppy Brew used to be my FM radio name.

Clothes make the man comfortable

Watching Habib Koite I've decided to get some threads like his because A) they look really comfortable and B) people will look at me and think, "That dude knows something I don't."

He's a complicated man

Whenever I hear the Theme from Shaft I always think of the famous alternate lyrics. (Who is the man that wears a thong and shakes his can...) OK, they're not all that famous.

Tolerate-hate relationship

Tempo Intervals I will never love you. I will do you. But it will always be an occasional quickie not a lasting relationship. Sorry.

Die Hoosier scum; OK, don't actually die, but suffer a lot

In life, I think it is vital to test your limits, to keep trying new and challenging things. But there's nothing wrong with taking timeless pleasure in some things, too. Like Indiana getting its ass kicked. By Purdue. In hoops.

Robot harp seal is angry with you

Be afraid, be very afraid. Robot harp seal has powerful laser eyes and cuts anybody attempting to club him in half, and sometimes just people who piss him off in general.

I see your Roomba and raise you one proto-terminator

All hail Bartron II, your new robot overlord.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste

Pew survey figures from a session on public views of science I'm attending this morning: 33 percent of Americans believe humans are unchanged since the beginning of time, 39 percent of Republicans, 69 percent of white evangelical protestants. Even if you dispute the mode of transport by which we got here, to deny that a journey was made is only possible by being willfully ignorant. Their outlook on the reality of and potential dangers posed by climate change is similar, by the way.

Simple pleasures

Sitting outside having coffee and waiting for the airport shuttle. My phone says it's 0 degrees in Indy. Maybe I won't get on the bus.

We'll make more

So much to do and so little time.

And how about a little carbo loading with that music

OK Dewars (who had my back). I took the light rail down, too. Easy. Of course you know spending the evening with Alejandro is going to make me run slower tomorrow.

Having a heat wave

Currently 39 F in Houston, going up to 57 today and 72 tomorrow. I'm thinking of stripping down to my underwear, or at least running the Rhythm & Blues Half Marathon Sunday in shorts.

Nutz

I'm not much for religion, but I do believe a damn good job was done on pistachios.

Neko mania

Neko is just such a songbird extraordinaire.

Running is...

That's the way the whole things ends

That's the way the cornbread crumbles
That's the way the whole thing ends
--Gillian Welch, The Way the Whole Thing Ends

1/22/14

Indiana's Purdue University shooting leaves one dead, man in custody

(Reuters)-A man was shot to death at Indiana's Purdue University on Tuesday and a male suspect was taken into custody, police said, in an apparently targeted killing that follows a rash of shootings at U.S. schools this month.

On Monday night, a student was shot and critically wounded outside an athletic center at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. Last week alone, two students were shot at a high school in Philadelphia, another was shot at a high school in Albany, Georgia, and two students were shot at a middle school in New Mexico.

Gun ownership laws in the United States have come under intense scrutiny since December 2012, when 20 young children and six educators were shot dead by a long gunman at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut.

1/20/14

Gun access tied to greater suicide, murder risk

(Reuters) - People have heightened risks of dying from suicide and murder if they own or have access to a gun, according to a new analysis of previous research.

Researchers found people who lived in homes with firearms were between two and three times more likely to die from either cause, compared to those who lived in homes without guns.

For the new review, the researchers analyzed 14 studies that looked at the risk of committing suicide among people who did and didn't have access to guns and five studies that looked at gun access and the risk of being murdered. Four of the studies examined both suicide and murder risk.

The studies were published between 1988 and 2005. All but one found people with access to firearms had heightened risks of dying from suicide and murder.

The researchers found having access to a gun was tied to a three-fold increase in the likelihood that people would kill themselves.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). About 12 out of every 100,000 people commit suicide each year.

Anglemyer's team also found about a two-fold increased risk of death from murder among people who had access to a gun, compared to those without access to firearms. For women, the increased risk of being killed was even higher.

Firearm ownership is more common in the United States (upwards of one-third of households) than in any other country – and firearms cause more than 31,000 deaths a year here, according to the review. Further, the annual rate of suicide by firearms in America is higher than in any other country with reported data; the annual rate of firearm-related homicides in America is the highest among high-income countries.

Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.
--Narcotics Anonymous

Toasting being toasty

It required 120 laps to get in 12 miles on the indoor track, boring, but warm. Hunters Pub is warm, but this People's 4th Anniversary IPA is by no means boring.

Frozen rewards

1.6 miles to the drug store to get out of the house, pick up a prescription and answer the silly question: Gee I wonder what running at minus 13 is like? I figured I owed myself the Heath Bar.

Beat up, but going strong

I got to visit with my longtime newspaper colleague (and Boston Marathon qualifier, she's much faster than I'm ever going to be) Jodi Heckel at the Siberian Express trail race in Illinois this morning. It was cold, but not really Siberian. The trails were nice and gnarly though.