Bye-bye, bulbie

I wrote some months ago about the impending start of the phase-out of the incandescent bulb.

It's here. In addition to massive biofuels subsidies, ridiculous fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, and other steaming, wafting piles of scientific nonsense:

One portion of the bill sets new efficiency standards for appliances and will make the incandescent bulb -- invented two centuries ago and improved and commercialized by Edison in the 1880s -- virtually extinct by the middle of the next decade. The bill will phase out conventional incandescents, starting in 2012, with 100-watt bulbs, ultimately ceding the lighting market to more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs and light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

Tourist... terrorist... let's call the whole thing off

Nobody's Business brings us, from the Chicago PD's own website, their newest flier outlining how to spot potential terrorists. Among the "suspicious" behaviors?

Physical Surveillance (note taking, binocular use, cameras, video, maps)

Glad they cleared that up. Now I can clear all those pesky tourists from around my office with a quick 911 phone call.

Presence of individuals who do not appear to belong in workplaces, business establishments, or near key facilities

So, the odd guy who managed to gain entry to our office and didn't know who he was looking for? Terrorist. Not to mention the homeless, the crack dealers, and other suspicious individuals who hang out downtown and don't belong to any business establishment--they're all terrorists, too.

Mapping out routes, playing out scenarios, monitoring key facilities, timing traffic lights

Gasp! I should be reporting myself! And all that public role playing I had planned for my future sex life is now off-limits, too. Damn.

Stockpiling suspicious materials or abandoning potential containers for explosives (e.g., vehicles, suitcases, etc)

I've been known to park my car and (horror!) walk away. So does everyone else I know who owns a vehicle. How would anyone know we're planning to return?

Van Bakel sums it up nicely:

If terrorists do their dirty work by spreading, well, terror, what should we call public servants who promote fear and unhinged suspicions by telling the public to report note takers, binoculars users, camera enthusiasts, map owners, and motorists who time traffic lights?

I'm so glad the Chicago PD has so simplified the definition of terrorist to include, well, pretty much everyone I see. Takes the guesswork out of it.

Thoughts on Pakistan

Generally I keep my musings much more local. It takes more than I have to get torqued over issues of foreign/international consquence. But I have a couple of thoughts on President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule (read: imposition of dictatorship) and the suspension of law in Pakistan.

First, why can't our own leadership see that attempting to spread democracy in the middle east is a whac-a-mole game we'll never win? Just when we'd been patting ourselves on the back having Pakistan even marginally on our side, its governing leadership does an about-face and pops up as one more non-democratic society that, inevitably, someone in power in the US is going to insist we squash in the name of saving them from themselves. We'll waste even more lives and resources trying to fight the hydra of undemocratic thinking that is the middle east. Fuck pride - why can't they just admit that it's a lost cause and stop pissing away our military and our money by spreading them thinner and thinner over that sand pit?

Second, for those of us who've noticed Bush quietly move the chess pieces into place for exactly the same scenario, it's a struggle not to feel a bit alarmed as events unfolding so far away might later unfold here. (And please note, even if this doesn't come to pass under Bush, our next President will have exactly the same bloated powers, courtesy of the predecessor. That the powers might be wielded by The Other Party doesn't make me feel any warmer or fuzzier.)

From the "Good Fucking Grief" files

It's shit like this that makes me doubt any hope for humanity.

Iowa Family Finds Snake Head in Can of Beans

An Iowa family filed a lawsuit seeking damages over a snake head they claim to have found in a can of green beans.

Amy Schneider said she found the head when she opened the can of green beans on March 24, 2006. It was about the size of a golf ball, she said.

"It was ... yuck, it was really yuck," she said. "It was gross."

She said Lakeside Foods offered her some coupons when she complained.

It doesn't appear she actually ate any of the can's contents. And she deserves something more than coupons... why? Ms. Schneider, at BEST you can claim you're out perhaps a dollar for that can of green beans, plus perhaps a dollar for every other can of green beans in your pantry you now can't bring yourself to eat, and THAT'S being generous. But suing for mental anguish because you saw a snake head?

Grow the fuck up, you pantywaist.

Astounded

Why on earth do I continue to be surprised at government idiocy? You'd think that by now, I'd have long since accepted the fact that stupidity has no bounds... that we have, indeed, invented a better idiot at every junction in social evolution.

As I was driving home yesterday, someone tossed a rock (or something heavy--I never found it) off a freeway overpass and smashed my moon roof. Fortunately I had the sun shade closed, so there were no injuries.

Knowing my insurance would ask, I reported it to the state patrol. And even now, I'm astounded at the level of warped thinking that led to the response I got. First, they didn't get back to me for 20 minutes, ensuring that whoever threw the rock was long gone. And then they drop the bomb on me--if they file a report, it'll go down as a collision on MY driving record.

Unreal.

Fuck you, Seattle PD, redux

Looks like their response to crime and thugs is to turn downtown into Stormtrooper Central. I hadn't noticed it today, given that my mind is on other things, but I'll be keeping watch over the next few weeks. I carry my camera with me at all times, so if I get any interesting pictures, I'll post them.

Fuck you, Seattle PD

Busy downtown corner is a "hot spot" for crime

It just takes police too long to respond, he said. Even for something serious like Monday's shooting, it takes police too many precious minutes to get to the scene, he said.

Pan said he met with an officer about a month ago, but he doesn't feel like there's much they can do — they're too understaffed — and the city can't afford the number of officers it would take.

(emphasis mine)

I have a bit of an interest in all this for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that I work a block from the McDonald's where the shooting took place, and it didn't occur, as most incidents around here do, late at night or on a weekend. It happened at 4:30 in the afternoon on a weekday, a time when I might conceivably be out on the mean streets, as it were.

But I just have to say this: fuck you, Seattle PD. Spare me this "we need more police!" bullshit. You have apparently inexhaustible resources to place police to catch drivers who inadvertently venture onto 3rd Avenue when it's closed to any traffic but buses. You have plenty of bicycle cops who have nothing better to do than hand out $60 tickets for jaywalking. Why? Because those activities generate revenue. Dealing with violent and property crimes cuts into your precious operating budget with absolutely no financial return, and we can't have that, now can we? Plus, how would those poor officers meet their quotas for ticket-writing?

Not that I want to see more jackbooted thugs around here. It was bad enough when my employer decided to cooperate with your drug task force by allowing you to use some of our window offices to spy on the drug dealers below. And every fucking one of your officers did nothing but scowl at us as we went about our business in our own office space.

Just stop blowing smoke up my ass about needing to hire more officers, and the ensuing money crunch associated with hiring them. You HAVE the officers. You've just chosen to dedicate them to more lucrative pursuits.

Endangered incandescents

Rather than creating incentives to switch to the more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) now common on the market, governments around the globe are adopting various timetables to phase out or ban the incandescent light bulb.

I'm not entirely sold on the case against the incandescent bulb. Yes, they're energy hogs, with a mere 5% of the energy they consume emitted as light and the rest wasted as heat. (Okay, sometimes that heat isn't wasted; reptile tanks usually make use of it.) I could conceivably realize some savings in my electricity bill by switching to CFLs entirely.

And I have, to a degree. My outdoor bulbs would burn out once a month because of broken filaments caused by the vibrations from regular training flights conducted by the nearby air force base. Tired of wandering around the house to change bulbs, I switched all my outdoor lights to CFLs, which have no filament to break. And the woman who fixed up my house before I purchased it did install some fixtures that take nothing but energy savers. Other fixtures will take either, and as the incandescent bulbs burn out, I replace them with fluorescent ones.

But (you just knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you?) I haven't made the switch completely, and it's not for a lack of effort. Not every lamp in my house is accepting of the newfangled CFLs. I have two lovely lamps in my living room, each of which takes two bulbs, that stubbornly refuse to play nice with the new ones. I have two halogen desk lamps that also won't make the switch. CFLs aren't generally dimmer switch-friendly. I haven't tried CFLs in my motion sensor lights, but then again, I haven't seen a flood light or a small candelabra light that isn't incandescent. When I start having to consider replacing multiple lamps and light fixtures as well as the bulbs in them, the meager cost savings in energy flies right out the open window.

New fixtures? Strike 1 against the CFLs.

CFLs have hefty transaction costs, even when all your lamps and fixtures play nice with them. Right off the bat, they're damn expensive to purchase. I can buy 8 incandescent bulbs for less than the price of one CFL. And they're not easily disposed of. You can't just throw them in the trash--they require hazardous material disposal because of the 5 milligrams of mercury in each bulb. Some hardware stores have take-back programs for CFLs, and in many places, the local dump will take them, but either way, that's an extra errand for me because I can't just drop it in the trash or recycling bin and be done with it. If every household were using CFLs, trash hauling companies might begin accepting them at the curb, but I wouldn't count on it.

And where does that mercury end up? Some studies suggest that despite their mercury content, CFLs would net a decrease in mercury released to the environment because (in theory) fewer coal-fired power plants would be operating, therefore releasing less mercury. Sorry, but I'm not buying it. Because power plants are quasi-governmental, there's no way they'd be allowed to close solely because of lower energy use. And it doesn't factor in the amount of extra mercury ending up in the environment because many folks are ignorant of the fact that CFLs can't be disposed of like regular bulbs, or the danger to your household should one break before you've disposed of it.

Mercury hazards and an extra errand just for disposal? Strike 2.

Lastly, color me skeptical that anyone is likely to realize lower electricity rates from energy conservation. Energy rates aren't subject to the laws of supply and demand, largely because of *gasp!* government interference. Local monopolies dominate the market. If I want electricity, I either hook up to the sole local provider, or I sit at home reading by candle light. I can't do business other energy company whose practices and rates I find more reasonable. If use and demand fall, rates still increase. As an example, during a particularly dry 2001, Seattle Public Utilities strongly campaigned and encouraged folks to use less water. The public responded favorably by significantly cutting consumption. And at the end of it all, what did SPU do? Because so little water was used compared to projections (which are synonymous with budgets), SPU lost money and needed to raise water rates. I suspect any drastic reduction in energy use would net the same reward. And what incentive does any public utility have to keep energy rates low? When was the last time you've seen one petition the public utilities board for a rate decrease?

And not only that, I'm willing to bet the energy savings is a farce similar to the lies that brought us low-flow toilets. Toilet flushing in America is completely insignificant when you consider water consumed by agricultural and industrial uses. Nothing. We could all start doing our business in the woods behind the house, and statistically speaking, water usage wouldn't go down at all. I suspect, though I have no evidence, that energy wasted by incandescent bulb usage is much the same--an insignificant blip next to energy spent by industry and air conditioning. Why bother with all this if our net gain as a nation is using 0.001% less energy than we did before?

Liars dangling the carrot of lower energy bills and energy consumption? Strike 3--YOU'RE OUT!

So, with the prospect of a phase out of the incandescent bulb looming, I'm doing the only thing I can--hoarding incandescents. It's incredibly ironic that congresscritters spend so much time talking about creating incentives to become more environmentally conscious, yet the incentive they're creating now has driven me to do exactly the thing they don't want me to do--buy incandescent bulbs, in larger quantities than I would otherwise buy. If those idiotic fucks in Washington think I'm going to replace all my unacceptable lamps and light fixtures or spend serious cash having them retrofitted to accept CFLs because "incandescent bulbs are bad, mkay?", they can kiss my ass.

Ouchie

I've deliberately held off on commenting on the Virginia Tech shootings, mostly because the incident's relation to gun control (both current and future), has been aptly covered by bloggers far more talented than me. I particularly enjoyed LawDog's commentary on the fact that not only are we denying people the most effective weapons for self defense, but the very mind-set required for it. Excellent point, that.

But what really has me irritated in this and other deadly attacks is the time and energy devoted to public wallowing. People who can be linked to the victims only in some Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon way are plastered by photojournalists on every television, newspaper, and website, sobbing uncontrollably in shameful displays of psychologically conditioned sorrow. They're rewarded by writers who quote them extensively, telling us all how they'll NEVER be the same, never feel safe, never get past their grief. Strangers leave mountains of candles and teddy bears and flowers and signs as some sick, clichéd memorial. Students across the nation are encouraged to visit with grief counselors and hold vigils and talk about their feelings. What an effective way to trivialize the dead.

And next year, on April 16th, we'll be inundated with the same vomitous bullshit all over again. Reopening wounds. Reminding the victims' families of their absence (as if they need it). Public wailing and gnashing of teeth. Grief counselors. Vigils.

The media have conditioned this ridiculous over-the-top response to tragedy in much the same way faith healers condition their followers to fall down during the laying on of hands. Followers see that everyone else falls down, so they fall down when their turn to be healed comes. We see the overwhelming public grief, and we're convinced that we must be hard-hearted and unhuman if we aren't as incapacitated by undiluted grief as all these other folks. And when we've been summarily duped by our emotions, we're paralized by inaction.

T.G. Browning of the Revised Devil's Dictionary, writes:

It's a peculiar, self-absorbed kind of mental masturbation to stand out in a courtyard with a bunch of people you don't know, holding a candlelight vigil for the slain students of Virginia Tech. None of the people there know any of the slain personally. The odds are extremely good that not one bloody person in such a crowd knows anyone who actually knows any of the murdered students. The odds are darn good that only a handful of people, at most, know anyone who knows anyone who is acquainted with the dead. If you're a betting person, it a good bet that no one there, does....

If there is one thing about the VT massacre that should stand out and be talked about, it's this: There was one person there who knew tragedy first hand, having survived a true holocaust: Liviu Librescu, the teacher who was killed protecting his students' backs, giving them time to escape. Like the passengers who prevented the terrorists from crashing their plane into their target, Librescu knew what he truly valued, in his case the students who depended upon him and looked to him for knowledge and leadership.

I can't see that teaching kids to manufacture grief is likely to produce many Liviu Librescu. Nor is it likely that fear will. There are, after all, all too many reasons to fear as it is. Don't weep for strangers for the sole purpose of grieving. Unless of course, you think reality shows on TV have any basis in reality whatsoever. If that's the case, weep on, my friend, great times will surely be yours.

Very few people are taking the time, like lewlew and her husband, to talk to their kids about formulating a plan to deal with violence BEFORE it happens. To think about potential havens, possible weapons for defense, what scenarios might make hiding or playing dead more viable than fighting back. No, most folks are still so paralized by grief (and will remain so) that little will be learned from any of this. And that, to me, is the most offensive waste.

If you really want to honor the dead, shed a few tears if you must, but above all, utilize their deaths as a learning experience rather than a grief competition.

To the bastards who broke into my house... Part II

I should add "Thank you" for taking the broken fan I had sitting outside waiting to be taken apart. And while I'm at it, thank you for leaving all my functioning fans still in the house.

I left the fan outside waiting to be dismantled so it would fit in the garbage can. A fan blade had completely snapped off and was rattling around inside, so I'm not sure how stupid you'd have to be to miss that fact. But I do appreciate that I have one thing to remove from my To Do list.

However, my To Do list got one item shorter and many items longer because of you, so don't think I'm feeling any warm fuzzies over all this just yet.

And screw you for wiping your bloodiness on my white shirt. Asshole.

And educrats wonder why parents homeschool

Looming flip-flop ban creates flap

The board decided to give flip-flops the boot because they consider them dangerous for working in school laboratories and for walking in crowded halls.

"Think about all the kids parading through the halls. You could get your feet stepped on, or a chair run across the edge of your foot," said Ed Barney, a board member who favored the ban in last week’s 3-1 preliminary vote. "Students should wear something that is going to protect their feet."

While I'll agree that wearing safe footwear is essential in a lab, an outright ban is just absurd. I'm willing to bet the board doesn't require students to keep their lab goggles on after leaving the lab, or their welding helmets on after they leave shop. They also can't stop students from wearing flip-flops in the mall where the risk of someone stepping on bare toes is just as great.

Professionalism was discussed at the Federal Way School Board’s meeting, as well. Next year, three middle schools in the district will begin requiring school uniforms. None are planned for the high schools, but officials say banning flip-flops is a middle ground for establishing a dress code that is appropriate. The hope is to prepare the students for higher standards they’ll face in the workplace.

"We want students to start on their professional lives," said Debbie Winskill, a Tacoma School Board member who agrees with the ban. "Flip-flops are not in that plan."

Which is nice, but educators are forgetting that more and more companies are adopting a relaxed and casual dress code, particularly tech companies. A friend of mine recently changed jobs, and while he showed up to an interview professionally dressed, the man asking the questions was wearing a t-shirt, bermuda shorts, and flip-flops. Any educator can stress the importance of professional dress - particularly for those critical first impressions - without an outright ban. And a ban that supposedly teaches "professionalism" looks even more stupid when students are pointing out that their teachers wear flip-flops as well.

Assuming risk of injury is part of growing up. I can't even fathom how a school board would think this was significant enough to consider. And on the heels of the War on Fluffernutter... the educrats have hit the top of the septic tank yet continue to dig.

And now back to my regularly scheduled Stanley Cup game...

Mailbag

This evening I was engaged in the time-honored tradition of finding the surface of my desk. When mail arrives at my house, my modus operandi is to sort out the important mail (bills) from the unimportant (everything else). The important mail gets dealt with in a timely fashion. The unimportant mail sits on my dining table until motivation strikes me to sift and shred. Because of this shelf time, I missed the following gem from my local post office:

National Dog Bite Prevention Week (May 21-28)

Recent statistics indicate that over 4 million people were bitten by dogs last year. Half of them were children and 3,475 were letter carriers!

The test goes on to explain the problems the Post Office (not those 2 million children) experiences with dog bites, from ripped clothing to severe injuries.

So, in addition to paying the salaries, medical expenses, workers comp of the bitten employees, I get the added expense of these stupid mailers, all for letter carriers who account for 0.08% of the total dog bites in a year?

Now, I grew up attending school with a boy whose face had some serious scars from a pit bull attack, and I'm never pleased to read about any animal attack. But give me a break. I'm supposed to get all worked up over 0.08% of dog bites, bites on adults?

Then there's this little nugget at the end:

...we are requesting that if you are a responsible dog owner, you would keep your dog restrained during mail delivery hours. Your letter carrier and your friends and neighbors would appreciate it!

Excuse me, but were I to have a dog, my response would be that the dog lives here. My friends, neighbors, and postman do not. I don't go over to someone's house asking that they keep their children penned up in my presence.

Also, I'd note that because we can never know when the mail will arrive, they're in essence asking us to keep our dogs restrained most of the day - at least until the mail arrives, or we arrive home, whichever comes last.

And last, responsible pet owners will have already taken precautions to make sure their dog won't bite a visitor on the property. So why address this notice to them? Seems to me it would apply to the irresponsible pet owners... you know, the ones who probably binned this card without a second glance.

A 911 story update

I wrote about this before, but here's an update.

Dispatchers Charged After Boy's 911 Call Ignored, Mom Dies

DETROIT — Two 911 dispatchers who authorities say failed to respond when a 5-year-old boy called the emergency line to say his mother had collapsed have been charged with willful neglect of duty, the county prosecutor said Wednesday.

Sharon Nichols, 43, and Terri Sutton, 47, face up to a year in jail if convicted of the misdemeanor.

It says they were both suspended less than a week and have since returned to work. Who wants to bet that if they're both convicted, they'll still be working the 911 call center?

Pandemics, police, and procedure

Never use police, army, US pandemic expert says

Henderson, who likes to describe how he was vaccinated thousands of times against smallpox to demonstrate the immunization's safety to wary villagers, says it is much easier to halt epidemics by winning the trust of community leaders and making use of gossipy schoolchildren.

He is critical of parts of the U.S. national pandemic plan that call for the use of quarantine and other imposed types of enforcement should influenza or any other infectious disease bring on a pandemic.

"Never use the police or the military," Henderson told a meeting organized by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Biosecurity, where he works.

"Once we brought military or police in, we found many citizens retired to the woods," Henderson told the meeting on Tuesday.

And when the health teams tried to quarantine families, they found a similar response. "People hid," he said. "They didn't want to be quarantined so they hid cases."

But if the government's objective is not to stop the spread of infection, but rather to protect its own interests, and it sees force as the necessary means, then such advice is useless.

It sure seems to me as though Bush is itching for a reason to declare marshall law, given how many times we're seeing it recommended as a disaster response. While I don't believe that an avian flu epidemic is imminent, or even likely, I have little doubt that the first response would be deployment of American troops on American soil for law enforcement.

Hiding in the woods, though... a wise plan to avoid the plague (of soldiers or infection, take your pick). All the more reason to have a designated place for retreat.

We make no apology for screwing you

Mix-up brands innocent citizens as criminals

The British government, already under pressure over a series of blunders in its immigration and prison services, has confirmed it wrongly branded around 1,500 innocent people as criminals due to a computer mix-up.

It said the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), which carries out checks on people who have applied for jobs working with children or vulnerable adults, had confused the innocent people with convicted criminals because they had similar or identical names.

The names were stored on a police database....

"We make no apology for erring on the side of caution. We are talking about the protection of children and vulnerable adults," a Home Office spokesman said.

So (not surprisingly) no apology is offered for screwing over innocent, vulnerable job applicants. Sorry, but the CRB didn't err on the side of caution - it simply erred. Big-time. The CRB has just as much obligation to the job applicants as it has to those more vulnerable citizens it's supposedly trying to protect. A greater obligation, actually, when one accounts for the tax dollars those job applicants provide to fund such a service.

How much more evidence condemning the idea of government-controlled national databases is necessary before people stop believing that this time there will be no mistakes? These kinds of people-tracking services are NEVER mistake-free, not even in the private sector where quality is often notably better than government performance.

What really ticks me off is the complete lack of apology combined with a glaring absence of acknowledgment of the possibility that other errors were made. You know, the kind of errors that would, say, put a child molester to work at an elementary school. Unstated is the admission of bad data and data handling policies, and the simultaneous insistence that the CRB's performance is A-okay. Again, none of this is astonishing, but that doesn't remedy the irksome level of smug incompetence wrapped up in one little quote.

The government is here to screw protect us. Now was it wearing a condom when we all grabbed our ankles?

And it just keeps coming

Lawyer: Response to Boy's 911 Call Not Isolated Case

In a series of calls in January 2005, a 911 operator questioned the sanity of a Detroit woman who reported she had been shot in the head. An emergency crew didn't arrive until after the woman called her son and got him to call for help, attorney Geoffrey Fieger said....

In her first call, Lorraine Hayes calmly asked for an ambulance, gave her address and said she had been shot in the head. The operator asked if she was male or female and Hayes stumbled, first saying she was male and then correcting herself.

After some more questions, the operator asked: "Are you a mental patient?"

"My body is numb. I'm getting ready to die," Hayes said at one point.

The operator said she did not believe Hayes would be able to call if she was shot in the head and told her she would get in trouble if she was making a false report.

I'm speechless.

What was that about 911 reliability?

911 Operater Tells Boy Not to Play With Phone as His Mother Dies

The Detroit Police Department promised a thorough investigation Friday after coming under intense scrutiny both locally and across the nation for an incident in which a woman died after her 5-year-old son's calls to 911 were dismissed as a prank.

Robert Turner, now 6, called 911 twice after his mother collapsed Feb. 20 in her bedroom on Detroit's west side. A recording of the calls, which family members gave the Free Press on Friday, revealed that the boy's pleas for help weren't taken seriously.

Having listened to the calls, once the kid said "my mom passed out" that should have been enough to take the calls seriously. Instead, the operator(s) were almost immediately confrontational, demanding to talk to either an adult or the kid's mom, and then threatening to report him to the police for making prank calls.

I realize 911 operators handle plenty of time-wasting calls, but had either operator (and it may have been the same operator on both calls) attempted to elicit more information from the boy, perhaps he would have provided a more coherent plea for help.

Teaching her son to call 911 wasn't wrong - in fact, it's much more problem-solving than some parents teach - but this just reinforces my beliefs on the importance of knowing your neighbors, and making sure your kids know at least one trusted neighbor or family member they can call upon in an emergency. It certainly appears that this boy didn't what else to do when 911 failed him, that he thought after he dialed 911, everything else would fall into place. And none of that is his fault.

Keep emergency numbers written near the phone. Make sure your children know their full names, address, and phone number for use in an emergency, and be sure to discuss with them the times it's appropriate to share that information with a stranger. The simplicity in remembering "911" isn't sufficient; kids can be taught more than that.

Why calling 911 shouldn't be the only option

911 calls in Chattanooga go unanswered

Thousands of calls to Chattanooga's 911 call center have been going unanswered, according to records examined after a caller was unable to report a kitchen fire because three of four dispatchers were taking breaks at the same time.

Stacey Hunter and her family members called 911 from her home phone and cellular phones Monday afternoon when the fire broke out, but the calls went unanswered. Finally, Artterius Bonds, and 14-year-old nephew, Quayshaune Fountain, ended up running a half mile to get help from the fire station. No one was hurt.

This is one of many reasons I don't buy gun control advocates' continued insistance that calling 911, or any emergency service, is a decent solution to an emergency. In fact, it's often the only solution they offer.

Imagine this scenario: you're a single woman, living alone, and someone is breaking into your home in the middle of the night. Do you reach for the phone, or did you wise up and purchase a firearm and train to use it? Now, even if you call 911 and they actually answer, it still takes precious minutes for them to report the crime and officers to respond. And keep in mind that police are not legally obligated to protect you.

But there's a chance a 911 operator won't pick up your call or, even worse, will answer your call and send no one.

Hoyt Branham, who lives in northern Hamilton County, said that in October 2004 he severed an artery in his arm while working in his shop. He called 911 in Chattanooga, told them he was bleeding profusely and provided his location. But no one showed up.

Branham, 70, said he was alone and getting weak, so he called neighbors and his daughter ended up taking him to the hospital. He said 911 operators later denied that he called, but a review of their recording equipment showed he did.

Yet another reason gun control advocates need to take a good, long pause and rethink recommending calling 911 as a first response.