my hot water pot randomly broke. I was heating up a pot of water and it suddenly stopped heating. at least it died doing what it loved.

we watched a lot of Doctor Who over the break. we finished watching highlights of the Tom Baker era and started on the Davison era. we also started watching Community. i also read a few books, went to the gym regularly, listened to a lot of news, read a lot of news, etc. i can still have NPR playing in the background while i work, but i think television will be relegated to maybe an hour or so on weekends. and, of course, our traditional "french movie sunday afternoons".

Anyway, it's kind of surprising to me how NRA talking points propagate. There's tremendous social pushback to what I think are some very reasonable ideas: you need some sort of license to get a gun (like the state of Illinois' FOID), all gun sales (including private ones) need to be reported and the buyer undergoing a background check (this part may be obviated by the licensing requirement), fund research into the causes of gun violence. The first two are seen as intrusions into lawful citizens' freedoms. The last is seen as partisan gun-grabbing BS that will only be used to support gun control (while they constantly complain that there isn't any evidence that any suggestions we make to curb gun violence will make a difference (except, of course, MORE FREEDOM (which means more guns to them))). but, you know, otherwise reasonable people start trotting out things like "Obama has people with guns guarding h is kids!!!" and I'm like... that doesn't have anything to do with anything, much less with what I'm saying.

I mean, I'm not even floating things like the "assault weapons ban" or the "high capacity magazine" ban. I think a farmer should be able to have everything from a BB gun to a 30-06 if they think they need it (and an AR-15 is between those) and it would be really hard, given various Supreme Court decisions, to get rid of handguns. But handguns are what lead to most gun injuries and deaths. High capacity magazines aren't really the problem (they're easy to make, anyway) and pretty much everything is semi-automatic, so regulating that isn't going to work. What little research has been done suggests criminal gun markets can be seriously inconvenienced by adding hurdles to gun acquisitions, so that's a good place to start. Guns are involved in 30,000 deaths and 100,000 injuries every year in this country, that would suggest to me that the government has some interest in providing at least some minor hurdles that law-abiding citizens can clear easily (e.g., filling out a form, waiting a week or two, having a background check). Yes, this makes private sales slightly more difficult. It does away with the "gun show loophole".

Here are the President's executive orders: http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/01/16/read_president_obama_s_new_proposed_executive_orders_and_legislation_on.html Most of those sound quite reasonable. I particularly like 14 and 16.

Lance Armstrong: it's only cheating if it isn't being done by everybody else. That's the problem with steroids in the 90's. Or even now. There are a bunch of sports where countries that have good dope testing agencies cannot compete anymore.

One of the books I read was The Book of Ebenezer Le Page. It was sort of a hip thing to read recently in certain circles. And rightly so: it was a very good book. Highly recommend.

Speaking of books: we made a Christmas tree out of books. It was nice.

I'm on a huge Bowie kick right now.