Funny story. I had told my daughter not to let anybody bully her on the ice; that it is important to establish yourself as somebody not to mess with. I told her to make sure and return the favor, even if it might be an accident.

So this little guy who can barely stand faces off with her on the wing waiting for the puck to drop. He's so wobbly and carrying his stick wrong (too high) that he accidentally bips her on the helmet. She hauls off and tomahawks the little dude before they even drop the puck. He had to leave the game before it started.

I almost fell down myself laughing. She didn't even get penalized. In Atom/Mite hockey they let a lot go if it seems to be a misunderstanding or accident.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

They just like me better, that's all.


FJD: Yeah, that is funny. Cute as heck, too.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

I was neither stunned, nor particularly surprised.

I had been expecting a major terrorist attack against a large American city for years -- to the point of refusing jobs in any downtown. I remember standing at 12th (or so) story window in August 2001 and thinking how much I felt like a target. Granted, I expected a chemical or possibly nuclear attack, not airplanes hitting buildings. But it was close enough.

I once told one of my co-workers that suburbs have an advantage over cities in being a less concentrated target. He did not take me seriously -- and ended up apologizing on 9/11/01.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

You'll forgive me if I find that to be particularly cowardly. I also remind you that the Pentagon is not a hi-rise, so if you ever do find yourself in the crosshairs, it could be anytime, it could be anywhere.

During the height of the DC sniper scare, one of my bosses was doing a fundraiser for the March of Dimes. He went out, in the open, in a yellow safety vest, and did his thing in broad daylight. This was three killings into the incident, when no one had a clue what we were facing, or where the next incident might happen. That is courage. That is living.

Life should not grind to a halt because people are violent idiots. Without a little courage, these kinds of attacks will always succeed in causing far more collateral damage than the attacker ever dreamed possible. The damage caused directly by those planes is almost secondary, those 2900 shredded bodies and lost live utterly insignificant, compared to the damage caused by the indirect fallout from September 11th. Because the majority of us are cowards, our reflex response driven by mindless self preservation has exacerbated what could have simply been a very bad day in American history. Nothing more than a Lockerbie++.

I'm actually quite angry at this country for being so predictable in its cowardice. You do not preserve yourself from a threat by hiding from it, its inevitable that a persistant hunter will inevitably find you, seige defenses are invariably breached because of their passive nature. You engage that threat and cut its head off, and the threat goes away. A lot can be said about what has gone wrong since 9.11, even the supposedly aggressive response to those who hurt us, and the misappropriation of violence against an unrelated target, not unlike a rape victim that sees a potential threat in everyone they meet from the day of the attack forward, the fact is the seige mentality that has come to govern the US is damage done to us that will outlive those who inflicted it on us. A scar that will not heal because we choose not to let it heal.

If you let your normal life -and working downtown is something I consider normal, everyday life- be alteered by terrorists, they have won IMO. I'm not saying you should go to baghdad on a holiday now because otherwise the terrorists have won, but refusing any downtown job is something quite different IMO. A bit like refusing to fly in general.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I've thought about that too. We live about 40 miles from downtown St. Paul MN, and there is a definite comfort in being located a bit away from targets like airports, tall buildings, nuclear facilities, etc. But with worse weapons than airplanes in our foreseeable future, 40 miles ain't much. I'm banking on the fact that they won't have many, and will use them on the coasts, on bigger population centers, strategic targets like shipyards, etc.

BTW, I haven't joined the local militia or put up gun towers yet, but a couple turrets on the barns and some razor wire might be in order before my daughters reach dating age.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Yeesh, talk about technology creep. Whatever happened to the good old days when a .22 calibre warning shot across the windshield was enough when all they did was pull up and honk the horn?

There's a statistic I like to keep in mind: 100% of all people are going to die.

You take your precautions and you live your life as you will. Anything short of that is an utter waste of the time you have.

In a way, it's a little how I feel about retirement. Yes, the ability to be financially secure when I get older and less able to pull a 9-to-5 would be nice, but at the same time, I'm not going to run myself ragged to the point that I can't enjoy life while I'm young enough to grab it by the... er... hair and get as much as I can out of it.

(... He says while goofing off on a message board ...)

Ilya, I grew up on stories about the Halifax Explosion, and about the Expulsion. And while these were horrific events, they're a drop in the bucket compared to automotive accidents, or tobacco deaths, or cancer rates. Try to learn to deal with these "little surprises" as they come up, and not borrow trouble.

Turn off the TV and try to stay away from hysterical people. You'll be a lot happier in the long run.

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In Fallout 3, 'happiness' is a warm junkyard dog and a loaded gun. It's mostly the loaded gun.
- Moose's one-line review.

"your going to regret that one. You are now a colonoscope...
- Chrissy, corrupting PraedSt's wish.

When I was bullied as a teenager, I did not "hide from the threat" -- I strangled the bully (not to death, obviously), and no one bothered me again. When my dive buddy was exhausted in 8' waves and was about to get smashed against rocks, I swam after him, with considerable danger to my own life. When I am in a position to do something about the threat, I do not hesitate to do so.

So what would you have me do in my pre-9/11 position -- one of few people who watched "Death to Great Satan!" screaming, and took the screamers seriously? Join the military? Did that already, back in 1985. Become a firefighter or an EMT? Would never be good at it, I do not function well under pressure*. Vote for tough politicians? Rudy Giuliani has my vote sewn up already. Not being in a position to "do something", the best I could do was remove myself from what I (more or less correctly) perceived as "line of fire".

*Only in metaphorical sense

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

The fact that I do not like downtowns had something to do with it. It was no great sacrifice on my part.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

That's of course a bit of relevant information I didn't have the first time .

I don't go looking for danger, but I don't change my life for a non-specific danger. If the shortest way home is through a dark alley, so be it. I've lived next to nuclear reactors all my life, and if my job requires me to be in the centre of Brussels, I'll be there, traffic permitting .

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

What do I do about it in my position? Pay my taxes, get on with my life, and maybe get lucky and die in my sleep (preferably not with a car full of screaming passengers).

Since I mentioned this case earlier, I'm going to update the story. Two girls tried to break into a guy's house. He shot and killed them. He was arrested. Friends the girls burned down his house a couple of days later.

Well, the latest information was that instead of the guy being afraid of unknown burglars and shooting blindly from the inside of the house, he shot one girl from inside the house, then he went outside the house, and saw the other one and shot her twice, killing both of them. That, I think, might be considered to be "murder" in this state. He could have just stuck the gun out the window and yelled at them to go away. That would scare off a couple of teenage girls.

http://www.kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewe...30376&cat=HOME

"Gallegos and Dodge were shot and killed on Page’s property Saturday evening. Investigators now say that Gallegos may have been trying to break in to Page’s home when she was killed by a single gunshot to the chest.

Police say that Page then walked outside and fired two shots at Dodge, killing her."

Uhh...

The eyes can be harder targets than you think, especially against a trained attacker.

I'd much rather recommend some rudimentary Krav Maga instruction; they teach some simple grapples, knees, elbow attacks, etc. Useful for people of any size, any gender. Even teaches how to deal with knives and firearms.




Well, maybe not any size. Halflings need not apply.

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"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -- Thomas Paine

Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor. -- Heinlein

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night. -- Isaac Asimov

Terrorist attacks? I'm not going to live my life in fear, just like certain government officials want me to. More people die yearly from condiment related accidents than terrorist attacks.

Since the discussion seemed to turn this way a bit...

Feb 12, 2007, Salt Lake City, Utah and 18 year old man pulled into the parking area for the Trolley Square shopping center. He got out of the car with a 12 gauge shotgun and a .38 pistol, and killed the first two people he encountered. He then moved into the building firing at people and objects for about three minutes. At that point an off duty police officer from another city drew his own gun and returned fire, keeping the man detained until the SL police arrived. Total response time is listed as 6 minutes.

There were 5 people killed, 4 hospitalized, and the shooter died at the scene as well.

Police have said the man had no significant criminal history. A few very minor things before turning 18, but nothing that would have been seen as a foreshadowing of this.

This is the second time this has happened in Salt Lake in the last 20 years or so, when it was not gang related.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

I'm assuming your typical limp noodled rapist is probably not a trained martial artist, and the eyes usually acheive maximum vulnerability while the primary attack is underway, and his attention is....distracted.