Video of the new place

Video of our new place from when we moved in. I'm not much of a narrator, unfortunately:




And a little bonus video from our road trip of an invention that was long overdue:

So this was kind of a big deal

Things have been pretty busy the last six months to say the least. So busy that I forgot to mention my mom and two of her sisters starred in a TV news story. All three of them have had and overcome a similar form of cancer, with my mom the most recent mutated-cell ass-kicker. I never mentioned it here before because Mom's a private person, but now her story's up on Houston news channel MyFoxHouston.com.

Technical note: I hope that player still works. The station didn't seem too on the ball with their equipment. For instance the "home video," as the report calls it, of my mom and her sisters was actually shot by a reporter from the station. When the footage didn't come out well -- a kind of huge white light envelopes my mom and her sisters -- the station coolly laid the blame on the cancer victims. Mom calls it their halo.

Medical note: All three sisters were nearly mis-diagnosed as cancer-free, by virtue of a variety of medical mishaps. Long story short: if something doesn't seem right when you're being screened for stuff like this, be real damn sure to speak up about it and nag until you get your questions answered. My mom and her sisters did, and they're all probably alive today because of it.

What can you say?

Being part of the media gives me the creeps during tragedies. True, many people do a lot of good, dogged, necessary work in gathering information people want or need to see. But the siege-like atmosphere after the fact, with continuous live coverage via satellite truck, is excessive, tasteless, and pointless.

But then there are the poets. News agencies gather information and hope for an emotional response. Poets, like Nikki Giovanni above, simply turn words into emotion. It almost goes without saying that the literal meaning doesn't matter as much as striking the right tone, which her short performance seemed to do. If you saw the well-meaning drone of the previous speakers, as I did at work, my meaning would probably be clearer. But I'll stop there since the only thing left to say about the tragedy itself is to offer condolences.

One general thought, though. At some point during the TV coverage, the talking heads started speculating about how yesterday's events should shape gun control policy. The answer is: it shouldn't. Policy regulates society. It is a set of rules put in place to govern large groups of people who are assumed to be rational actors. It is not intended to account for a crazy person, who, almost by definition, is not part of that society. You simply cannot prevent something so patently irrational with a piece of legislation. And in focusing on trying to prevent "the next (insert horrible event here)," it seems inevitable that the focus would fall away from enacting laws that are effective across the greatest swath of society. It just seems obvious that laws should be geared toward people who will take into account the costs, punitive or societal, of their actions, not someone so clearly deranged. (Leslie, feel free to jump in here and correct me if I'm wrong.)

It is, however, a good time to evaluate crisis response plans and the like. For example, as a painful intellectual exercise, consider this link, via Tommy. That's one of the more disgusting examples of how a mind can panic that I've seen.

UPDATE: In comments, Amy asks, "what are your thoughts on NBC's airing of the video?"

I didn't see it, but in general, I think it's appropriate. There's a significant public interest in seeing the video and perhaps understanding the killer better — even if it's only to the extent that people realize he was completely, utterly insane. What matters is what the news agency does after it's adequately satisfied that public interest. It's a blurry line, but there's definitely a point at which coverage goes from informative to exploitative.

Gunner? I hardly know her.

My god. He just burned through what would have been something like 10 rolls of film. Those pulses at the end are due to the camera's internal memory filling up as it dumps images to the card, and even that's happening at an amazing rate. Apparently Canon set out to build the equivalent to one of those stereo systems that threatens to explode right out of a hooptie's trunk. Lord knows there's no practical purpose, but everyone wants one.

Via Strobist.

Thanksgiving at my place