Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

According to this article in the Dayton Daily News (registration required)…

An 84-year-old man was sentenced to seven years in prison Friday for shooting a neighbor in a dispute over the construction of a garage.
…
Hashman testified during his trial that he shot Oskins because he feared his neighbor would grind his feet off with the snow blower.

So where is police Sgt. Dumbass, from a couple of posts ago, to say “It sounds like it’s just a simple mistake by an elderly man,” and that he “seriously doubts” charges will be filed? I mean, the old guy is either mentally disturbed or thought he was in danger. In either case, it turns out he was wrong about the snow blower, and hence, shooting the other guy. Oops! He should be cut some slack, right?

There’s no mention in the article of whether either man owns or uses a cell phone, or if a cell phone was somehow involved in the shooting, or the tension leading up to it.

And now it’s time for my two cents about the new wireless Mighty Mouse I received yesterday.

It’s a mouse. I move it, and the little arrow on the screen moves in a synchronized fashion. I don’t notice that the new laser tracking mechanism is any more accurate than the optical mechanism in my other Apple wireless mouse, which I never thought was inaccurate to begin with. I’ve had to consciously force myself to start using the scroll ball and the right-click. That’ll take me some time to get used to, and I never thought the absence of those two things was a big deal. The scrolling works, um, fine, but I don’t think repetitively moving my finger over the scroll ball is better than clicking-and-dragging the scroll bar in the window.

I like being able to push in the scroll ball to bring up my dashboard. That’s a handy feature I’ve already gotten used to. As for the side buttons, I have those assigned to Expose, all windows, and I find the buttons hard to push. It takes a good squeeze to activate them. Then again, I don’t know that I’d want them to be too sensitive because every time I grabbed the mouse they’d activate, and that would be annoying.

The wireless Mighty Mouse looks and feels a bit cheaper than the regular Apple wireless mouse, in my opinion. It doesn’t have the same kind of clear coat finish, and the plastic seems like it’s thinner or something. I liked the gray Apple logo underneath the clear coat as opposed to the indented one stamped in the Mighty Mouse, but that’s just personal preference.

The Mighty Mouse is definitely lighter than the other mouse, but I never considered the other mouse too heavy to begin with. And as for one battery operation, I’m not sure what rational person would exclude a mouse from their on-the-go set-up because of the weight of a single AA battery, although I know those people exist.

Overall, I’m happy with it. I was happy with the regular Apple wireless mouse too.

From this article at CNN:

EL MONTE, California (AP) — An 85-year-old man who drove a car onto a patio at a Starbucks coffee shop and injured 10 people, two of them critically, isn’t likely to face charges, police said Saturday.

“It sounds like it’s just a simple mistake by an elderly man,” said police Sgt. Richard Williams, adding he “seriously doubts” charges will be filed.

Awww, the poor elderly man… It was just a simple mistake that injured 10 people, and probably could have killed some of them had it been worse. No reason to file charges just because someone who obviously shouldn’t be in control of thousands of pounds of high-speed metal endangered the lives of 10 people. Give him a grande soy milk whipped cappuccino triple-shot latte and an overpriced cookie (at Starbucks’ expense) and send him home.

What if this had been a 40 year-old man with a cell phone in his hand? Or a teenager with a cell phone? What if the old man was yakking it up with his respirator-bound friends at Shady Acres on a cell phone when he plowed into 10 people? Police Sgt. Dumbass would be on the phone to Sing Sing immediately, telling them to get the electric chair warmed up.

I don’t understand why some kinds of dangerous drivers are given a free pass, and other kinds have activist groups and governments of all levels bearing down on them. Injuring (or killing) 10 people because of negligent inability to control a vehicle should result in the same consequences for everyone, whatever their age, whatever hardware is in their hand. The idea that cell phones pose a special, singular threat to the driving public is absurd, and I prefer that absurdity die a painful death before it becomes yet another nanny state law enacted at the behest of do-gooders who think they know what’s best for everyone and charge government with the responsibility of protecting us from ourselves and others, instead of letting responsible adults live their lives.