I wonder about Sandy Hook too...

Unfortunately just a few days before Christmas we had that awful school shooting known simply as Sandy Hook.  Too many children, and adults dead from a single gunman, who then took his own life, and we'll never know the motivation, although a few family friends have speculated.

The carnage was caused by an assault rifle, a legal assault rifle.  That is to say the owner of said gun purchased it legally.  But it wasn't the shooter.  It was his mother who bought the gun.  Which brings the first question.  Why did a mother, who admitted her son had mental health issues, buy an assault rifle?  Second question... why was it not put in such a secure place that he could not get his hands on it?  Same question for the other guns she had in her possession.

I'm not anti-gun, but I am anti-assault rifle.   I know the constitution gives us the right to "bear arms" but I believe the founding fathers meant to take up arms against those who would depose us from our homeland.  We use arms to protect our homes; to hunt; in war.  But only in war would an assault rifle be advised.   Are we now at war with future generations?

Therefore, a third question...why are we allowing the sale of assault rifles?  In my mind, they're hardly "sporting" rifles.  Hardly gives the game a "fair" chance.

As for Wayne LaPierre, from the NRA, saying that authorities had "blood on their hands" by not taking better care to secure schools, my blood boils at the assumption.  Does anybody really give him credence, with such amazingly thoughtless, heartless statements?

Too many questions, not enough answers on Day 227!

Goodby books!

Not so fast!  Oh sure, the new electronic readers are all interesting and handy, but I'm not sure they're going to take the place of a book, with real pages that you turn, any time soon.  Here's my argument.

If you go on a vacation, you can carry your little reader because it's easier to carry than a tote bag of books.   You can read in the dark and not bother to turn the light on and annoy others who prefer the dark (think bedtime, car drive, etc.)  You can look "up-to-date with modern technology!"

Unlike a book, the electronic instrument has to be recharged from time to time. The book you can set down, with just a bookmark in it.    Unlike a book, if you lose your place, you have to manipulate it a bit more to find where you left off.  You can trade your books on your reader with others, but if they don't have a device, then you can't give them a copy of that favorite book, unless you buy it in hard form.  If you take your books out in the environment, if they get wet, or otherwise damaged, you can get another.  If the reader gets wet, well, replacement cost would be quite a bit more, plus you've lost all the "books" and information you have stored on it.  With a book, you just lose the one item.

Lets face it, books have been around for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.  Before that we had stone tablets we wrote on.  Some of those are still around, although not practical.  But we still have the Rosetta stone. We'd like to find the 10 Commandments and they were presumably stone.   Just watch Antiques Road Show to see how much an autographed copy of an old tome, or even a newer publication, can sell for.    You're not gonna get that out of your reader.

The computer has made our lives easier, there's no question about that.  But if we didn't make "hard copies" of much of what we read or write, and someone erased those important papers from the computers, then how would we confirm what we did?   If the Declaration of Independence were on a computer, and that computer was erased, we'd never know exactly what was said. We'd be guessing.These readers are just another, less involved form, of that computer.  And if you've got a really important "book" on one, then there's probably a "hard copy" somewhere.

You can still find me, braving the crowds, at Barnes & Noble, on Day 226!
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