In Today's Mailbag

A letter I didn't finish reading:

Dear Robert,

As most of you know, it was my privilege to take office as the president of Coe College last July.

Some of me knows that, maybe, but not really most of me.

Kohawks: Am I correct in thinking that the legendary Signi would have kicked his butt?

Another Notch in the NRA's Belt

From this morning's Chicago Sun-Times:

Monday afternoon, a 14-year-old girl pulled a gun from her waistband, authorities said, and aimed it at Endia Martin to settle a dispute over a boy that started on Facebook.

When the teen pulled the trigger, it jammed.

She handed the gun to someone in the group she was with who fixed the weapon and handed it back to the girl, who then fatally shot Endia, also 14, in the back, prosecutors alleged.

The victim and the alleged shooter once were friends, one of Endia's cousins said.

[snip]

The gun used in the shooting, a legal .38-caliber revolver, was kept in the owner's car but was reported stolen April 14, [Chicago Police Superintendent] McCarthy said. Police departments don't let officers store their guns in their cars, but under the state's concealed carry law, individuals who are properly permitted can. [My emphasis.]

What happened, folks? For 150 years, concealed carry was considered a threat to public safety at best, and cowardly at worst. When was it, exactly, that we lost our minds?

John Oliver is Brilliant

A segment from John Oliver's new show. Did you know there's a big election going on in India? Probably not.

Good News for All But a Few Birds

I was glad to see this Kevin Drum link to a Bloomberg article about the danger of wind turbines to birds. The patter among some environmentalists is that they are responsible for massive bird kills.

Estimates from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wildlife Society don't support that.

What's amazing to me is the high number of fatalities caused by birds flying into buildings and windows. When I was working in downtown Chicago, there were mornings when I'd find 5 or 6 dead or stunned birds outside just one building. They saw nothing but blue sky and clouds in front of them, not realizing that they were flying into a glass building, and the sky was behind them.

Not many birds, it seems, die of old age.