orichalcum

It took Eowyn two days to get over her terror of going through the open gate of the new baby enclosure and over the 3-inch ledge. It took McLevy two days to figure out how to open the gate when not firmly locked, crawl over the ledge, and make it into the rest of the living room in pursuit of power cords. When I put him back inside and locked the gate, he immediately stretched his hand through and started fiddling (so far unsuccessfully) with the lock mechanism. I don't think he'll figure it out from that side, as it's a bit complex, but I'm not going to leave him in there unsupervised.

I was reading an editorial by Bob Herbert today (locked, unfortunately) which mentioned that the U.S., every year, has 30,000 gun deaths.

To put that in perspective:
649 accidental deaths
88 children expelled _per week_ for bringing a gun to school (All stats are from http://www.bradycampaign.org)
1200 teenage suicides each year
16,000 adult suicides
11, 624 murdered by guns each year.
8 children and teenagers killed by guns in the U.S. every day.
Firearm homicide is the leading cause of death for black males aged 15-34.
In 2004, 56 people were murdered by firearms in Australia, 184 in Canada, 73 in England, 5 in New Zealand, 37 people in Sweden.

I know this is an area where I disagree on some points with a lot of folks. But I found these statistics chilling - and surely we can all agree that any system where 1000s of kids can put firearms in their backpack and bring them to school is deeply messed?

An awesome interview with Michelle wherein she demonstrates her coolness: Michelle rocks!

Is anyon else scared now for Yau Man the challenge superstar?