SLAMMIN'!!
Work - 10 days remaining
If 40,000 pieces was really good, then 51,500 is a virtually unbeatable record. :) Nobody else has ever inkjetted that many of this item in one shift. In fact, that's more than first shift put out today COMBINED with the output of me and my partner the last time we did this. It helped that we had three people working the inkjet machine today, but the third person is only a marginal improvement in efficiency, because the machine is really meant for one to two operators - one person loading the input bin (me), and one boxing up the output. Two people might be able to get 50k done (if it was me and my usual partner), but the machine would have to be working flawlessly and we'd have to push ourselves really hard.
Now, on to the sociopolitical commentary. In the spotlight this evening: guns and violence.
The Wisconsin Hunting Massacre and its Bearing on Gun Control...
Well, it didn't take long. We now have a poster case that should be perfect ammunition (heh) for gun control proponents to use in arguments for reinstating an 'assault weapons ban.' Having debated the issue of gun control from both sides (pro-regulation when I was in middle school, anti-regulation in high school), I consider myself better-read than most people are on the subject, and I am somewhat of a moderate, as both sides have valid points.
I think that a ban which applies to semiautomatic weapons...
- with magazines carrying more than three to five rounds, and/or
- capable of exceeding certain rates of fire,
is definitely warranted. You do not need anything remotely resembling an AK-47 for hunting purposes. We were briefly discussing this incident at work tonight, and even my co-worker John, who is a hunting enthusiast, agreed with that statement. The purpose of a semiautomatic weapon is simply to enable you to get shots off more quickly than a bolt-action weapon or shotgun. If you are hunting, you should not want or need to put even half a dozen rounds into your target - all you need is one or two. If you think you need more than that, then what you really need is to practice and improve your accuracy!
I am not sure how accurate the information presented at this link explaining the now-expired ban is, but it seems to-the-point and well thought-out. What's needed now is a law that addresses the fire rates of weapons bluntly, instead of skirting the issue and allowing manufacturers to adjust and slip new models through. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of having a Republican congress in place is that they are unlikely to implement something that could be seen as so decisively anti-gun. The only good thing that can be said about the lack of regulation on assault weapons for the moment is that it swings both ways - if you are afraid of being the victim of an incident like this, you have the option of purchasing and learning how to use something like an SKS yourself.
...and Video Game Violence..
Now ponder this one for a bit. Mr. Vang of the hunting assault case, a professional truck driver, does not seem to be the kind of fellow who would spend much time playing aggressive video games. But do you think journalists like the author of this article are going to make note of that? Of course not. They like to reach for connections that aren't there, rather than commenting on incidents that do not support their pre-established opinions.
Mr. France never establishes a definitive cause-effect link between the crimes of Gary Ridgway and video game violence; he just pulls Ridgway's name in as a scare tactic. The statement "If a parent wanted their children to develop attitudes like Gary Ridgway, [...] these games might provide a good training ground" is only defensible because it turns on the word "might." Well, I might win the lottery next time my dad buys me a ticket. So what? If a parent wanted their children to develop antisocial and homicidal tendencies, a far more effective approach would be to begin consistent abuse. That is far more likely to result in additional violence and crime than a game 'providing a training ground' for killing techniques. Soldiers are trained to kill, yet it is very rare that they go rampaging down their own streets with their machine guns. Why? Because they have intellect and conscience that overrides hostile impulses, and tells them that it is not okay to use their training to resolve their personal problems and disputes.
The problems arise when something else removes that conscience override. Only then does a person 'snap' and begin destructive behavior. Even as 'realistic' as video games are today, they are not capable of significantly dulling or removing the conscience of a well-raised child. I can say this with confidence, because I had fun waging wars of aggression and killing thousands of little pixel-civilians in the Rise of Nations demo, and fragging countless enemies in first-person shooters, yet I have also discouraged my parents from even squashing the small swarm of ladybugs that found their way into our house this fall. Why kill something harmless when you could just take a few steps and toss it out the door? And how much more, then, should we go out of our way to avoid causing actual physical harm to real people?
This opinion is supported by data cited in this paper by a psychology professional: "Students who scored in the top 20% on a trait hostility scale showed much greater increases in physiological response than students scoring in the bottom 20% of the hostility scale. Children who were more hostile also showed much greater response in adrenaline, nor-adrenaline, and testosterone than children who were less hostile after playing a violent video game." If there is a correlation between school shootings and video game content, it's because the perpetrators of the violence were subject to additional risk factors (such as predisposition to hostility and being the targets of aggressive/abusive behavior themselves) which dulled or removed their moral imperatives against extreme viciousness.
In my opinion, targeting violent games is simply an evasive tactic by parents and the media. No one likes to suddenly get a phone call saying their child has committed a shocking murder. Certainly no one expects it! Human reflex (for normal people) is to deny complicity or responsibility of any kind in such an act. So when there is a history of aggressive gameplay by the perpetrator (which there will be more often than not, with children, because aggressive individuals will gravitate toward pastimes which offer an outlet for aggression), it is obvious and convenient to blame the games. The real truth is that the crimes would not happen if the child's moral code and social habits had been properly guided from Day 1, and - in cases of chemical depression etc. - more attention had been paid to their mental well-being.
Gunfire Sensors? Long-Term Effectiveness is Questionable...
Meanwhile.. anyone who has played the original Deus Ex may find something familiar about this gun-related story. I first ran into the concept of gunfire-sensing devices in the Hong Kong Streets area of Deus Ex: The Conspiracy. Of course, the sensors did not stop the player from engaging in violence. A crafty player wishing to avoid being pounced on by police could take a cue from the locals and switch to using melee weapons - knives, shock prods, batons, even swords - or else go the suave and stealthy spy route, making sure to use only firearms equipped with some form of silencer. And then there were the devices themselves - vulnerable to attack by gunfire (*forehead-slap* Yeah, if you're going to buy these things, it's a good idea to go ahead and make them bullet-proof), short-circuiting them, or blowing them up. The game wasn't flexible enough to allow for climbing up the poles to foul the sound sensors with soundproofing foam or other foreign substances, but that's not out of the realm of possibility in real life. Surely this innovation on the part of Chicago law enforcement will take more than a few stupid or hot-headed thugs off the street, but eventually, they will think enough to figure out that a determined homicidal person can get around these things. Then it will be back to catching them the old-fashioned way.
((Let me cover my legal bases here in case someone's eyebrows are raised by the preceding paragraph: I do not advocate resolving one's grievances by means of assault, and do not intend this information to be put into use by anyone to circumvent the new systems. The parallel situation is out there in the game - published several years ago - for anyone to find. This has merely been a discussion of the probable evolution of the crime situation in Chicago over the next several years.))
This is a lot to digest and a lot to discuss. I expect at least a couple of comments on this one!! :)
If 40,000 pieces was really good, then 51,500 is a virtually unbeatable record. :) Nobody else has ever inkjetted that many of this item in one shift. In fact, that's more than first shift put out today COMBINED with the output of me and my partner the last time we did this. It helped that we had three people working the inkjet machine today, but the third person is only a marginal improvement in efficiency, because the machine is really meant for one to two operators - one person loading the input bin (me), and one boxing up the output. Two people might be able to get 50k done (if it was me and my usual partner), but the machine would have to be working flawlessly and we'd have to push ourselves really hard.
Now, on to the sociopolitical commentary. In the spotlight this evening: guns and violence.
The Wisconsin Hunting Massacre and its Bearing on Gun Control...
Well, it didn't take long. We now have a poster case that should be perfect ammunition (heh) for gun control proponents to use in arguments for reinstating an 'assault weapons ban.' Having debated the issue of gun control from both sides (pro-regulation when I was in middle school, anti-regulation in high school), I consider myself better-read than most people are on the subject, and I am somewhat of a moderate, as both sides have valid points.
I think that a ban which applies to semiautomatic weapons...
- with magazines carrying more than three to five rounds, and/or
- capable of exceeding certain rates of fire,
is definitely warranted. You do not need anything remotely resembling an AK-47 for hunting purposes. We were briefly discussing this incident at work tonight, and even my co-worker John, who is a hunting enthusiast, agreed with that statement. The purpose of a semiautomatic weapon is simply to enable you to get shots off more quickly than a bolt-action weapon or shotgun. If you are hunting, you should not want or need to put even half a dozen rounds into your target - all you need is one or two. If you think you need more than that, then what you really need is to practice and improve your accuracy!
I am not sure how accurate the information presented at this link explaining the now-expired ban is, but it seems to-the-point and well thought-out. What's needed now is a law that addresses the fire rates of weapons bluntly, instead of skirting the issue and allowing manufacturers to adjust and slip new models through. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of having a Republican congress in place is that they are unlikely to implement something that could be seen as so decisively anti-gun. The only good thing that can be said about the lack of regulation on assault weapons for the moment is that it swings both ways - if you are afraid of being the victim of an incident like this, you have the option of purchasing and learning how to use something like an SKS yourself.
...and Video Game Violence..
Now ponder this one for a bit. Mr. Vang of the hunting assault case, a professional truck driver, does not seem to be the kind of fellow who would spend much time playing aggressive video games. But do you think journalists like the author of this article are going to make note of that? Of course not. They like to reach for connections that aren't there, rather than commenting on incidents that do not support their pre-established opinions.
Mr. France never establishes a definitive cause-effect link between the crimes of Gary Ridgway and video game violence; he just pulls Ridgway's name in as a scare tactic. The statement "If a parent wanted their children to develop attitudes like Gary Ridgway, [...] these games might provide a good training ground" is only defensible because it turns on the word "might." Well, I might win the lottery next time my dad buys me a ticket. So what? If a parent wanted their children to develop antisocial and homicidal tendencies, a far more effective approach would be to begin consistent abuse. That is far more likely to result in additional violence and crime than a game 'providing a training ground' for killing techniques. Soldiers are trained to kill, yet it is very rare that they go rampaging down their own streets with their machine guns. Why? Because they have intellect and conscience that overrides hostile impulses, and tells them that it is not okay to use their training to resolve their personal problems and disputes.
The problems arise when something else removes that conscience override. Only then does a person 'snap' and begin destructive behavior. Even as 'realistic' as video games are today, they are not capable of significantly dulling or removing the conscience of a well-raised child. I can say this with confidence, because I had fun waging wars of aggression and killing thousands of little pixel-civilians in the Rise of Nations demo, and fragging countless enemies in first-person shooters, yet I have also discouraged my parents from even squashing the small swarm of ladybugs that found their way into our house this fall. Why kill something harmless when you could just take a few steps and toss it out the door? And how much more, then, should we go out of our way to avoid causing actual physical harm to real people?
This opinion is supported by data cited in this paper by a psychology professional: "Students who scored in the top 20% on a trait hostility scale showed much greater increases in physiological response than students scoring in the bottom 20% of the hostility scale. Children who were more hostile also showed much greater response in adrenaline, nor-adrenaline, and testosterone than children who were less hostile after playing a violent video game." If there is a correlation between school shootings and video game content, it's because the perpetrators of the violence were subject to additional risk factors (such as predisposition to hostility and being the targets of aggressive/abusive behavior themselves) which dulled or removed their moral imperatives against extreme viciousness.
In my opinion, targeting violent games is simply an evasive tactic by parents and the media. No one likes to suddenly get a phone call saying their child has committed a shocking murder. Certainly no one expects it! Human reflex (for normal people) is to deny complicity or responsibility of any kind in such an act. So when there is a history of aggressive gameplay by the perpetrator (which there will be more often than not, with children, because aggressive individuals will gravitate toward pastimes which offer an outlet for aggression), it is obvious and convenient to blame the games. The real truth is that the crimes would not happen if the child's moral code and social habits had been properly guided from Day 1, and - in cases of chemical depression etc. - more attention had been paid to their mental well-being.
Gunfire Sensors? Long-Term Effectiveness is Questionable...
Meanwhile.. anyone who has played the original Deus Ex may find something familiar about this gun-related story. I first ran into the concept of gunfire-sensing devices in the Hong Kong Streets area of Deus Ex: The Conspiracy. Of course, the sensors did not stop the player from engaging in violence. A crafty player wishing to avoid being pounced on by police could take a cue from the locals and switch to using melee weapons - knives, shock prods, batons, even swords - or else go the suave and stealthy spy route, making sure to use only firearms equipped with some form of silencer. And then there were the devices themselves - vulnerable to attack by gunfire (*forehead-slap* Yeah, if you're going to buy these things, it's a good idea to go ahead and make them bullet-proof), short-circuiting them, or blowing them up. The game wasn't flexible enough to allow for climbing up the poles to foul the sound sensors with soundproofing foam or other foreign substances, but that's not out of the realm of possibility in real life. Surely this innovation on the part of Chicago law enforcement will take more than a few stupid or hot-headed thugs off the street, but eventually, they will think enough to figure out that a determined homicidal person can get around these things. Then it will be back to catching them the old-fashioned way.
((Let me cover my legal bases here in case someone's eyebrows are raised by the preceding paragraph: I do not advocate resolving one's grievances by means of assault, and do not intend this information to be put into use by anyone to circumvent the new systems. The parallel situation is out there in the game - published several years ago - for anyone to find. This has merely been a discussion of the probable evolution of the crime situation in Chicago over the next several years.))
This is a lot to digest and a lot to discuss. I expect at least a couple of comments on this one!! :)