What about pepper spray? Or a taser?

Why is it that the 90 pound woman needs a gun to protect herself, instead of something that can disable her attacker? Something that will not accidentally discharge and harm herself, or be found by her children and possibly cause their death ( yes, I know that tasers and pepper spray could conceivably cause death in a small child, but there'd probably be more time to get little Davey to the hospital after he accidentally tases himself than if he shot himself )?

What about the fact that a taser or pepper spray ( or any other non-lethal means of defense ) probably has a much smaller chance of accidentally killing someone who wasn't the intended target? Let's be honest, if a 90 pound woman is being attacked by a 200 pound man, she probably isn't in the proper state of mind to ensure she won't injure someone else if her shots don't hit her intended target.

On a lighter side note, every time I read "200 pound man", I'm imagining some overweight fellow with sausage fingers instead of some muscled gang hooligan ( my imagination seems to be inflating him to be 400 pounds ).

Yes, but is that something the something you wanted to hit? Will someone who's being stared down by a criminal know not to pull the trigger because there are innocent people behind that criminal? How much time and training does someone need to be able to hit their target reliably when they're hopped up on adrenaline and fear?

Also, I have no idea how true this is, but I remember an episode of Criminal Minds where a character stated they carried a knife instead of a gun because inside ten feet ( I think that was the range ), he could pull a knife and throw it ( accurately, mind ) before someone else could get a gun out of their holster. Now of course, I don't know how that holds up to real life -- the character in question was a police officer on a Native Reserve who had been training to throw knives for a fairly long while, and I don't really know if an untrained user would be any more accurate with a thrown knife than a gun.

The thing is, just because guns can be accurate, doesn't mean they will be -- especially in the hands of someone who may not be fully trained in their use, but is also having to fire their weapon in a stressful situation that may have never been in before.

There is no guarantee that a gun is more accurate than any other weapon.

If the bear is biting down on your leg, I doubt shooting it in the head will help much. That line from Shawshank Redemption comes to mind:

Plus there's also that thing where having the proper state of mind to grab your gun, point it at the bear's head and pull the trigger while it's doing it's best to detach your leg from the rest of your torso.

At least we on the West Coast can call in the winter and brag about our sunshine =D

Just out of curiosity, how many fingers does Tom have?

Not sure what it's like on the island, but in Vancouver, our beaches are only usable ( due to too much cold/wind/rain or just not enough heat ) most of the year, so stuff moving around isn't a problem.

Then again, the opposite of this technology ( warming the sand ) might be useful for people who frequent Wreck Beach

Another option is to find a startup that's hurting for employees.

I'm still going to school, and I managed to land a job doing web design for a company that's doing pretty good business.

I guess it'd be a good idea to notice that the main reason I got the job because of who I knew though. I only heard about the job because a friend of mine informed me: they weren't advertising as needing people.

If by 'toxic environment' you mean 'most third world countries', then this is a pretty handy thing to have.

Hell, even the 'average well water' there probably isn't safe to drink without (additional) chemicals and some old fashioned heat.

That's happening right now in British Columbia, Canada with the natural gas. The pipes are still owned by a company called Terasen, and the price of gas is set by the but you can choose to get the gas from one of many providers or stick with the company that owns the pipes.

However, Terasen is profit-neutral on the gas. They buy their gas in three month intervals from the suppliers, which means that if the price of gas goes up, they have to charge more to stay profit-neutral. The other companies however, can buy gas in bulk, and you can get 1 to 5 year fixed price agreements.

As an aside, I worked as a gas marketer for a few months last summer. It was kind of sad how many people just didn't see the benifit, even when I was able to show them how their natural gas costs have gone up a ridiculous amount in the past few years. From a pdf found through Google: "In 1995, the average annual price of natural gas at Sumas/Huntingdon and Station 2 was under $2.00/GJ; by 2003 the price was over $6.00/GJ, a threefold increase". And the price is just going to keep climbing over the next few years, thanks to natural gas being a non-renewable resource. It would have been nice to get a fixed rate contract back when natural gas was less than $2/GJ!

What I thought was really sad though, was how people 'had heard from a friend that works for Terasen' that the gas marketers were charging more than Terasen. But that's how a fixed rate plan works. The gas marketer gets a deal for several years, and fixes the price. Yes, for the first year, you might be paying more -- as much as $2 or $3 per gigajoule more -- but after that first year, you're saving lots of money. When I was out going door-to-door last summer, the price of gas from Terasen was about $5/GJ. Now ( as of October 1, 2008 ) the price is $7.536/GJ. The 3-year plan my company offered was something like $9/GJ. Now they have five year plans too. Next year, the price will probably be a few bucks more ( gas prices tend to fall a bit in the summer, then jump to a few bucks higher than the previous winter -- non-renewable resource and all that ).

And a lot of companies do this thing where at the end of your contract, if you choose to stay with them, your new contract will be the median between what you were paying and the current price of gas. So if you were on a contract for $10/GJ, and the price of gas had gone up to $16/GJ, you'd only pay $13/GJ on the new contract. Well, the company I worked for did anyways.

And yes, I know. I'm a horrible human being for working as a door-to-door salesman. I was paid on commission only though, and I had to quit after two months because I barely made enough money to pay for gas ( car gas, not natural gas ). So that job didn't totally corrupt my soul. That's what the internet is for!