Re: ripping off of trademarked material for religious purposes. Years ago a coworker had a catalog of T-shirts and the like with very familiar-looking logos repurposed for Christian messages: for example, the distinctive "The Lord of the Rings" logo and font rephrased as "The Lord and the King," or something like that.
I expressed doubt that such blatant ripoffery could be legal. Her response was that it served a higher law than that of man. This was the same woman who firmly believed that in the future everyone will have RDI chips forcefully implanted in their hands (which made me giggle, because all I could think of was "Futurama" and how one had to have a career chip implanted in one's hand).
Sounds like a song from the "Gangs of New York" soundtrack called "Sshhu" by Durgen Chugaa. I think I spelled that right. Anyway, the same kind of guttural singing. Very cool.
Uh? I just submitted something, and it went into the aether. I was saying, Thomas: I started thinking of these two as The Smiler and The Beast long ago. :)
And what nobody seems to understand is that you can pass laws banning all kinds of firearms, from Uzis to BB guns, and it still WILL NOT STOP those who really want to get a gun and use a gun. All the laws in place at the time of Columbine, for example, did not stop the shooters from carrying out their plan, because THEY WERE LAWBREAKERS. Sorry for the shouting, but people seem to believe that if there's a law against something, everyone will follow the law! How nice that would be, but it just does not happen.
That having been said, this is not the fault of the gun, or the gun's availability, or even dare I say the gun's presence in the hand of a child (which I can't find any justification for, either). It is the responsibility of the adults present, who should have known better.
For example, you can die a painful death if you choose to drink drain cleaner. Yet drain cleaner is perfectly legal and available almost anywhere. But it comes with a warning on it, which very small children would not be able to read, just see the pretty colors. Therefore, it's up to the ADULT to keep the drain cleaner away from children, not up to lawmakers to make drain cleaner unavailable for everyone because it's possible to die from drinking it.
One of my favorite art professors once said that in order to be able to paint the way for which he was famous, Picasso had to first be a truly good painter in the traditional sense. Seeing the painting he completed at the age of fifteen really drives her point home.
She had one strand of hair that seemed to be bothering her: sticking to her eyelashes, causing her to blink a great deal. I noticed it because I don't like my hair getting in my face, and having bangs long enough to touch my eyelashes would drive me batty. So that was what I got out of the frequent blinking/winking that she did during the debate.
I expressed doubt that such blatant ripoffery could be legal. Her response was that it served a higher law than that of man. This was the same woman who firmly believed that in the future everyone will have RDI chips forcefully implanted in their hands (which made me giggle, because all I could think of was "Futurama" and how one had to have a career chip implanted in one's hand).
That having been said, this is not the fault of the gun, or the gun's availability, or even dare I say the gun's presence in the hand of a child (which I can't find any justification for, either). It is the responsibility of the adults present, who should have known better.
For example, you can die a painful death if you choose to drink drain cleaner. Yet drain cleaner is perfectly legal and available almost anywhere. But it comes with a warning on it, which very small children would not be able to read, just see the pretty colors. Therefore, it's up to the ADULT to keep the drain cleaner away from children, not up to lawmakers to make drain cleaner unavailable for everyone because it's possible to die from drinking it.