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A man was sentenced to jail in Pontiac, Michigan for performing a castration on his kitchen table.

Man jailed for home castration

A judge has jailed a Taiwanese man who performed a castration in his kitchen.

Suo-Shan Wang, 29, was arrested in June after the willing victim of the castration became unwell outside his home.

Wang was convicted of practising medicine without a licence and sentenced to 14 months to four years.

Willing victim?!  So just what motivated this step?

The man who underwent the castration did so because he wanted to curb his sex drive as he had a sexually transmitted disease, prosecutors said.

Man, that’s a bit drastic.  Hasn’t this guy ever heard of condoms?

So where did the enterprising pseudo-surgeon learn this skill?

Wang told police he learned the skill from his grandparents. He performed his first surgery on a dog and then on the dog’s owner and three of the owner’s friends in Australia, prosecutors said.

Hmmm…  Those are some really impressive credentials.

Another interesting tidbit turned up in this article.

Authorities say that after the procedure, the men shared a slice of pie at the same table on which the castration was performed.

I certainly wouldn’t share anything with someone who did that to me, but then I’d never willingly do something that freakin’ stupid.  I cringe just thinking about it.  Ugh.

Kim du Toit delivers one of the best lines I’ve seen in a while:

Bottom line for the parents: you were careless, twice. You didn’t teach the boy respect for a loaded gun, and you left a loaded gun where the boy could find it. Welcome to the Darwin Channel on Real Life TV.

I will never cease to be amazed at the lack of responsiblity displayed by some people.  Guns don’t “just go off” unless someone just pulls the damn trigger.  There’s no mystery about it.

I have no sympathy for someone who says, “the gun just went off.”  And before I’m accused of being a heartless bastard, I think it’s time that people started taking responsiblity for their actions.  Sometimes that means that we have to say the hard things even though people’s feelings will be hurt.

We tend to get so wrapped up in the media pity party that we forget that it’s people who are responsible for what happens (not inanimate objects).  If this fourteen year old wasn’t responsible enough to be around a firearm, then the parent had a duty to keep the firearm away from him (actually, I’d argue that the duty was to train him in proper gun handling and usage, but that’s an argument for another day).

I’ve been increasingly dissatisfied with the layout of my guns page.  It’s kind of bland and the way they’re laid out is kind of cumbersome.  At the same time, the way the page is maintained is a bit clunky (the page is generated using a PHP script that has the descriptions of all the guns as array entries in the code, which is not exactly high quality programming; but then, it was the first PHP script I’d ever written and I was in a hurry).

I’ve spent most of the day working on a new PHP script that will allow me more flexibility in how the page is laid out and in how the data is stored.  I’ve just gotten the code to the point where it can read an XML input file to pull the data in (it took me longer than expected, given the brain fog induced by a few too many rum-and-colas last night ).  The next step will be to write the code that uses the data to display the page.

My goal is to make this code flexible through the use of PHP templates for the various page elements and CSS style sheets to control presentation within the elements.  If I get really ambitious, I’ll look into autogenerating thumbnails.

If this works out, I may look into releasing the code for use by anyone who wants to create a gun gallery on their own website.

I took some time away from the computer today to get out and stimulate the economy.  My mood was considerably brightened by my new clothing purchases because I was able to finally break through a (psychological) size barrier. 

I am, however, left with the observation that there must be some kind of contest between the clothing companies to see who can use the most stickers and plastic hang tags on each item.  The problem is that those plastic hang tags usually leave a little end somewhere that you don’t see.  They either get lost in the carpet or find their way onto my bed.  I find them later by either stepping on them or rolling over and getting stuck.

When I checked my mail I found that the CDs I ordered from Amazon had arrived.  They were protected in the box by bubble wrap, which leads me to my second observation of the day—I don’t think I know anyone who can resist the awesome temptation of bubble wrap.  You can’t handle it without popping at least one (or two, or three….).

To conclude a rather crappy day my trip to the range was foiled by a power outage at Bass Pro Shops.  At that point, I decided to hell with everything and came home.

My cigars and that bottle of Jack are calling me….

Thanks to the asswitted pissant who created W32.HLLW.Nebiwo, all of us are required to run a manual virus scan on our machines here at work.  I usually endure this hellish scan on Mondays from 12:00 to 4:00.  My poor pathetic laptop is grinding itself into a slow death as it scans files (current stats—515500 files scanned, elapsed time 198:45; update: final stats—714350 files scanned, elapsed time 273:33).

I hate virus writers with a passion, because most of them are pathetic little teenaged asswipes who downloaded a virus kit.  To the nitwit who released W32.HLLW.Nebiwo, I hope your already tiny nether parts shrivel up and blow away.

Let’s take stock of the day so far:

• Headache—check.
• Having to review code, which is my least favorite activity—check.
• Interruptions for tech support questions (for which I am not responsible)—check.
• Having performance testing screwed up because the people that run the shared systems can’t keep a simple MQ Series server running—check.
• Urge to strangle the next poor bastard who comes through the door—check.

At least today is range day.  I can take it out on those evil paper targets.

The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.
  —Frederic Bastiat

Dr. Robert Atkins died today of complications from a fall he suffered earlier this month.  There seem to be a lot of people who revel in disinformation and ignorance about Dr. Atkins and the Atkins Plan.  It’s sad that I have to do this, but in the interest of truth, I feel I should share the following with everyone.

First, the cause of death:

The serious snowstorm that hit New York City the day before the incident, along with unseasonably cold temperatures, left streets and sidewalks slippery. As was his daily habit, Dr. Atkins walked from his home to his office, a distance of about one mile. At approximately 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 8, 2003, he fell and hit his head, suffering severe head trauma. Keith Berkowitz, M.D., a colleague at The Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine, was arriving at work at the same time, and was able to rush Dr. Atkins to the hospital within minutes. The doctors at the hospital emergency room determined that Dr. Atkins had suffered a subdural hematoma and that surgery was required to remove the blood clot from his brain. He survived for several days but eventually succumbed to complications.

He suffered a cardiac arrest about a year ago, but it was unrelated to the Atkins plan.

The cause of this event was cardiomyopathy, not blocked arteries. Over the last couple of years, Dr. Atkins has had an infection of the heart muscle (called the myocardium) contracted during an overseas trip. Coupled with the extreme heat conditions of mid-April here in New York, the 71-year old Dr. Atkins suffered this event.

“We have been treating this condition, cardiomyopathy, for almost two years,” explains Patrick Fratellone MD, Dr. Atkins’ personal physician and cardiologist, “and during the course of diagnosis, we discovered that Dr. Atkins’ coronary arteries were normal as diagnosed by an angiogram performed at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital on the upper west side of New York City in April of 2001. Clearly, his own nutritional protocols have left him, at the age of 71, with an extraordinarily healthy cardiovascular system. Unfortunately, the infection-related cardiomyopathy is totally another matter.”

I offer this because I have been told, quite sincerely, by people who ought to know better, that Dr. Atkins died of a heart attack (a year ago), and that anyone who follows his plan would do so as well.  Since I knew he was alive at the time, I naturally dismissed these people as either cranks or simply misinformed.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been on the plan since September and I have lost 65 pounds so far.  However, I have no interest in debating the merits of the plan with people.  I just want people to shut the hell up about it, as I’m fed up with their ever-so-solicitous suggestions about how I should run my life.

Working in the IT business, I can appreciate a lot of these.  That first button is especially appropriate.