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Driving home this morning, listening to Walton & Johnson, I heard that someone is shot in Chicago just about every two hours. The city of Houston was compared to Chicago, because the two cities have a lot in common. Population, and many demographics are similar. Yet, Houston doesn't witness a shooting every two hours. Hmmmmm . . . .

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/last-72-hours?page=8&sort=asc&order=State

That site tracks gun violence. That page lists gun violence for the past 72 hours.* Wow - in all of Texas, two gun deaths. In Chicago, excluding the rest of the state, six gun deaths. To be fair, we are trying to compare two cities - so the tally is Houston - 0 Chicago - 6. Clearly, Chicago is winning.

But, how can that be? Chicago has common sense gun laws, and Houston does not.

In Houston, we have open carry, concealed carry, hip carry, boot carry, pocket carry, purse carry, butt-crack carry, palm carry, hat carry, crotch carry - uhhhh - vaginal carry? Basically, you can tote a gun any damned way you want to carry a gun.

In Chicago, possession of a gun is a capital offense, execution taking place as soon as an LEO views your weapon - especially if you're a young black male with a weapon.

With a population of 2.7 million, Chicago has a violent crime problem, with their "common sense" gun laws.

With a population of 26.96 million, the entire state of Texas can't kill off as many people as Chicago does.

Common sense. The solution seems pretty obvious. Chicago should pass "Constitutional Carry". The constitution guarantees an American citizen the right to keep and bear arms. No permit, no jumping through hoops, no begging the sheriff for permission, no deviant sex acts committed in the alley behind the court house. Constitutional carry - I'm a citizen, I get a gun if and when I want. Or, when I can afford it, anyway.

http://heyjackass.com/ another site demonstrating how violent Chicago is.

* The page updates periodically, so the totals may look quite different when you look at them.

I've been interviewed on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio twice, the first time in 2004 for The Infinite Mind, the second for Wiretap.

In both cases they found me through Living with Schizoaffective Disorder. (I was also on CNN in 2010 but that one didn't concern my mental illness.)

Of the two, the Wiretap interview is far more interesting. It's archived online somewhere but I think it's in RealPlayer format, at least it was the last time I looked. Someday I'll dig up the link.

The above page concerns my experience of being interviewed.

The Vancouver Diaries concerns my time just before, during and after my time in Vancouver British Columbia - yes I've lived in both. The American Vancouver with the first, but that's off-topic here.

Vancouver BC is an incredibly beautiful, vibrant city but I was very lonely there as I left Bonita behind to finish art school.

Most of The Vancouver Diaries is offline until I adjust the markup to fit the design of its new location, as well as fix broken links.

There's No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
        Taken literally, this is patently false, as anyone with a grandmother knows. You may say “well, Grandma paid for it so it isn't free.” But it is free – to you.
        I have a fruit tree in my front yard, and all its fruit is completely free.
        What this old saying means is “never trust a salesman”. If a salesman offers to buy your lunch, it will cost you.
        From a physicist's perspective, it means you can't break the three laws of thermodynamics; you can never get more energy out of a system than you put in.

You get what you pay for
        This is another salesman lie, with the sales lady getting you to believe that the higher priced item is always better than the cheap item. But you don’t always get what you pay for. Often the less expensive item is equal or superior, with over-the-counter drugs being an excellent example. Aleve costs three times what generic naproxin does, yet is the exact same drug.
        And of course there are swindlers. If someone sells you a counterfeit Rolex at a real Rolex price, or a diamond ring with a zirconium stone, you have been swindled and certainly didn’t get what you paid for.
        You usually pay for what you get, but often you pay far less than you otherwise did. Just yesterday I saw a “going out of business” sign at a Radio Shack, and since I needed a new soldering iron I went in. The iron and solder were a third what I would have paid had I not procrastinated, and I got a TV antenna for five bucks. I got a lot more than I paid for.
        Get what you pay for? Usually, but sometimes you get more than you paid for and sometimes a high priced item turns out to be utter junk.

What goes up must come down
        This was true until July of 1969, when astronauts left man-made objects on the moon. They're not likely to ever come back down.
        There are robots rolling around Mars. These, too, are unlikely to ever come down.
        Then there are the Voyager spacecraft, which are now outside the entire solar system. It's a certainty that these machines will never return to Earth.

Money doesn't grow on trees
        Of course it does, orchards grow lots of money. Not only does it grow on trees, it grows on corn stalks, tomato plants, soybean bushes...

A picture is worth a thousand words
        If it is, then draw me a picture that says “a picture's worth a thousand words.” Pictures can be aids in communication, and a picture is better than a description, but it's impossible to teach using only pictures.
        However, it is true in a monetary sense, in that a thousand word magazine article will garner a commercial writer less than the artist who made the cover art did.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger
        Nietzsche was an idiot. Just ask any brain-damaged quadriplegic if he's stronger than he was before the accident.
        Oh, and also, God isn't dead, Nietzsche is.

You can never be too rich or too thin
        Whoever started this stupid meme was a gold plated idiot. Of course you can be too thin. Bulimia and anorexia have killed people.
        The “too rich” is subjective. I'd say if you have more money than anyone could spend in a lifetime when there are hungry people, you're too rich. How can someone like that live with themselves?

Lightning never strikes the same place twice
        It amazes me how gullible most people are, believing everything anyone tells them. They even believe stuff that was proven untrue centuries ago, as in this saying. It was believed for at least hundreds of years and likely longer until Ben Franklin disproved it with his kite and his invention of the lightning rod. If lightning never strikes the same place twice, lightning rods wouldn't work.

Only the good die young
Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray
They built you a temple and locked you away
Aw, but they never told you the price that you pay
For things that you might have done
Only the good die young
That's what I said
Only the good die young – Billy Joel
        I've heard this nonsense all my life, and can’t understand why people actually believe that tripe. Yes, some good young people do die way before their time.
        But if only the good die young, then why are so many inner-city young men killed in gun battles with rival gangs? Good people never die in gang battles unless they're not a part of the fight and simply get caught in the crossfire.
        Why do so many young people get drunk and die in their cars when they wrap them around trees? Good people don't drive when they're drunk.
        And if you're Christian, remember that Jesus said “none are good, except God.” Only the very young; the small children who die innocent are good. But bad young people die all the time.

Now this is embarrassing.

Just now I discovered quite a serious bug in the software I'm working on.

I'm quite certain the general concept is valid, but my implementation is buggy.

This is something I can fix but that twenty grand I thought I made last week just flew out the window.

I will give you one little taste: in 2001-2002 I worked on a database kernel for a Bahamian hedge fund. It's now a core component of a huge windows executable that trades a basket of 1000 commodities futures on the Chicago Board of Trade. It's consistently able to beat the best funds managers.

My invention isn't trading commodities but it's a conceptually similar program.

(I don't know how they fared with the 2007 subprime meltdown. My guess is that the fund's owner would have known to get out of the market, he's a real shrewd guy.)

My ship isn't at the dock yet but I think it's still headed in my general direction.

In any case I'm doing something more mentally challenging than reloading SN all day long.

A place I had really wanted to get into but didn't recently reposted the job. Fortunately, not getting this particular job was a blessing in disguise. The person who did get the job quit after a month and posted a nasty and somewhat personal "WORST COMPANY I HAVE EVER WORKED FOR!!!!!" review on Glassdoor.

The place was a prison-like environment, complete with hydra-headed video and allegedly audio recording, micromanagement, and incessant turnover. There's 5 single-star reviews for every positive one in the last year.

And to top it off, the only places they have reposted this job are free sites, or are using large text to tell applicants to go to their portal and not use the on-site apply function that costs them money.

I invented something about a year ago, and have been tinkering with it most of the time since.

I abandoned it in November when I concluded that it could not possibly work. But in December I started taking imipramine for my depression.

At first only one other person knew about my invention. I discussed it with him a couple weeks ago: "Which is truth and which is delusion? Will my invention work or not?"

"It seems like a reasonable idea," he replied but even so I was unsure as he is not an expert in this area. He only had my own explanations to go on. However I decided I really had nothing better to do so I continued my development.

I made twenty grand in just the last week.

Starting a week or two from now I confidently expect to make ten grand per day.

I apologize, I really do, but the value of my invention depends on secrecy. If I were to explain it to you, it would be very easy for you to build one. I've often puzzled over why no one else has done this before, eventually to conclude that others already have it, but are keeping a very low profile.

I'm going to donate every last penny of my money to homeless shelters, rescue missions and soup kitchens.

Last October or so, a drop-dead gorgeous woman said to me "That's a really nice shirt you're wearing." My reply?

"I bought it because I sleep under a highway overpass. The dark red doesn't show the dirt."

Hillary Clinton’s Energy Initiative Pressed Countries to Embrace Fracking, New Emails Reveal

BACK IN APRIL, just before the New York primary, Hillary Clinton’s campaign aired a commercial on upstate television stations touting her work as secretary of state forcing “China, India, some of the world’s worst polluters” to make “real change.” She promised to “stand firm with New Yorkers opposing fracking, giving communities the right to say ‘no.'”

The television spot, which was not announced and does not appear on the official campaign YouTube page with most of Clinton’s other ads, implied a history of opposition to fracking, here and abroad. But emails obtained by The Intercept from the Department of State reveal new details of behind-the-scenes efforts by Clinton and her close aides to export American-style hydraulic fracturing — the horizontal drilling technique best known as fracking — to countries all over the world.

My apologies for not posting this sooner.

I was told there was a "Mass" in my right lung. The definition I found online somewhere is that a mass is three centimeters or larger in diameter. A "Nodule" is smaller.

The CT scan tech said she was told it was a nodule.

The diagnostic radiologist sent my doctor a letter that said the nodule was one centimeter in diameter and "appears to be benign". He called it a "calcification".

However I may not yet be completely out of trouble. That my nodule is benign is most likely due to having a smooth surface. Cancer tumours have rough surfaces but the best way to tell the difference is to watch it over some period of time; Cancer grows much faster.

My doctor will order another CT scan in three months, then another after that in six.

However she too appeared confident that it was benign.

"Oh good" I said.

Oddly I was not worried about dying. It's not like I don't know how painful cancer is, I've seen it up close and personal several times.

In part it was because I've survived far worse things than cancer - I once read that "suicidal depression is the worst pain you can feel" - and in part because I have always wanted to leave something behind that is of lasting value.

I have already been able to do that through my writing.

Even so, I'm glad that I'm not likely to die. I still hope to have children. While we haven't discussed kids yet - that would be rather premature at this early stage - the lady I'm seeing likes kids, and she is young enough to bear them.

I feel very bad that I will no longer date women of my own age. I'm 52. It's not like I'm not attracted to them but I want to be with a woman who has at least the possibility of bearing my child.

However were I to fall in love with a women who simply did not want to have children, I would stay with her. That would be hard to accept but accept it I would.

"Would you like to come to my place for supper?"

I waited anxiously for the crushing blow of "Let's just be friends".

But no! To my great delight:

"Let's make it happen."

I have my own special pasta recipe. I could post it, but then I'd have to kill you.

A real good way to impress just about anyone is to be a good cook. I'm very improvisational about it. My father was heavily into cooking too, but he followed recipes scrupulously. I can make an interesting meal out of just about anything.

I don't usually drink but I'm going to buy a bottle of red wine. I even have real wine glasses. I've managed not to break any of them after all these years.