Glowing Fish's New Writeups

The Wytheville Post Office Incident (event)

2009-12-26T02:16:39Z

On December 23rd, 2009, Warren "Gator" Taylor, walked into a post office in Wytheville, Virginia, a town in the rural Appalachian region of Virginia, fired some shots with a pistol, and announced that he was taking hostages of two customers and one postal employee. He also claimed to have some explosives. There followed a nine hour stand-off between Warren Taylor and several police agencies, both local and federal. Taylor, who was in bad health and chose the Wytheville Post Office seemingly on a whim, gave up to authorities, and is currently undergoing psychiatric evaluation.

Taylor had a criminal record prior to this incident, and seemed to be predisposed to violent and irrational behavior, although his most major crime, the intentionally non-fatal shooting of his ex-wife, seemed to suggest that he didn't really have the desire to do anything quite as violent as indiscriminately kill three strangers. His stated motive for the crime was anger at the…

Suicide in Scandinavia (essay)

2009-12-23T18:40:15Z

A few days ago, the journal "Science" published a report claiming to make an objective list of the United States by happiness. Actually, what the report did was claim that objective criteria of happiness would match up with people's subjective self-reporting of happiness. The actual paper might have gone into more detail than this, but once a Top Ten list of happy states was released, the national press had a field day with it. I myself was less impressed with it, and by doing a scatterplot of the list of happy states, and suicide rates, I found out that the "unhappiest" states have the lowest suicide rates.

I read a New York Times article about the study, which was of course relevant to the Times, since New York State was, allegedly, the unhappiest state. I mentioned to the author that it seems like a curious conclusion that the "Unhappiest" state would also have the lowest suicide rate. He agreed with me mostly, but also pointed out that some very happy…

Timequake (review)

2009-12-22T07:54:40Z

I suppose if I had to review TimeQuake as succinctly as possible, it would be to say that if this manuscript showed up unheralded in the mailbox of some editor, there is not much chance that it would get published. There is not much chance it would get read past the first few pages.

This book is a memoir, randomly summing up the life of Kurt Vonnegut and his friends and families, in a series of rambling anecdotes. Mixed in with that is a novel following a science fiction plot about a ten year suspension in free will and its aftermath, the eponymous "timequake". The timequake is never explained in much details, and the characters in the novel are never fully explained, because the action of this novel is broken up by Kurt Vonnegut's memoir. Vonnegut admits as much in his introduction, saying that the original novel "Timequake" was never finished, so he produced this instead.

All of this could be seen as daringly post-modern, and for the most part, Vonnegut's style pulls…

Anti-Ballistic Missile (thing)

2009-12-20T03:19:37Z

An Anti-Ballistic Missile is a missile used to intercept and destroy a ballistic missile. Perhaps in full it should be described as an "Anti-Ballistic-Missile Missile", but such an unwieldy name never really caught on.

Anti-Ballistic Missile systems come in two main varieties: tactical and strategic. This usually refers to the type of missile they are meant to intercept, with "tactical" and "strategic" being code words for "conventional" and "nuclear". ABM systems can also have warheads that are either conventional or nuclear, and that would usually coincide with whether they are used in a tactical or strategic role.

An Anti-Ballistic Missile system is really not different in concept from any other Surface to Air Missile system, since it is meant to fly from the ground and hit a moving target. However, the execution is much different, because ballistic missiles are usually flying much faster than even a fighter…

Republican Revolution (event)

2009-12-16T06:27:30Z

The "Republican Revolution" was a name given to the success of the Republican Party during the 1994 Midterm Elections. The success was most noticeable in the House of Representatives, but also included success in the Senate, gubernatorial races, and amongst state legislatures.

I was fifteen at the time, and while I had many things on my mind (as will be discussed below), I did take some notice of the "Republican Revolution", and at the time it seemed counter-intuitive to me. In 1992, Oregon politics had its first bruising introduction into the so-called culture wars, with a ballot measure about homosexuality being defeated in a contest that brought many urban and suburban voters into a state of annoyance or disgust with the rural, fundamentalist wing of the Republican party. It might seem odd for me to be talking about this local issue in a discussion of national politics, but all will be explained. The basic story is,…

1996 US Presidential Election (event)

2009-12-14T02:29:02Z

In another writeup about elections, I wrote that "there are no standard elections", and for those of us who have drunken of the intoxicating nectar that is politics, there are no dull elections either. However, if I had to impugn the importance and great fun that is the United States' process of choosing a president, I would probably choose the election of 1996 as one of the more lackluster elections.

The 1996 election pitted incumbent President Bill Clinton against Bob Dole, the Republican Senate Majority Leader from Kansas. Third party candidate H. Ross Perot also ran, but was less important of a factor than he was in 1992. There was also other minor party candidates, but none of them played that important of a roll in the election. Bill Clinton secured his nomination by being the incumbent President. H Ross Perot secured his nomination by being the billionaire financer of his own party. And Bob Dole,…