Tag archive: Eris

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Liz, We Hardly Knew Ye: UK PM Truss Resigns

It’s ironic that Britain’s longest-reigning monarch should be succeeded by its shortest-serving Prime Minister, but that’s just what happened when Liz Truss stepped down from office after only 45 days in power.  The fact that they both had the same first name is just icing on the cosmic cake in this bizarre juxtaposition.  Truss stepped into the breach in the Conservative Party when embattled PM Boris Johnson resigned in the wake of scandal on July 7, but it took two months to wrap up those loose ends before she was officially appointed by Queen Elizabeth II on September 6.  Now, just six weeks later, she’s gone.

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American Agita

No, this article is not about the nation’s acid reflux problem.  It’s about the interplay of two Main Belt asteroids and how they affect the mood of the American populace.  Asteroid America was in fact named for the US, so it’s no surprise we find it useful in describing events important to the country.  Asteroid Agita, while technically named for Agita Tarasova, a relatively obscure science worker and computer programmer at the Astronomical Observatory of the Latvian University, also works both for the medical definition of the term (basically, heartburn), and for its more colloquial usage as general upset, turmoil, agitation and anxiety.

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Salman Rushdie Attacked

On 12 August 2022 Salman Rushdie, 75, famed author of “The Satanic Verses”, was attacked in public as he was being introduced for a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York.  Hadi Matar, 24, rushed the stage and flung himself on Rushdie, stabbing him multiple times in the face, neck and abdomen.  Airlifted from a nearby ball field to Erie Hospital, Rushdie remains on a ventilator, unable to speak; his agent stated that he may lose an eye and has extensive liver damage, as well as severed nerves in his arm.

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Have Gunn, Will Gavel

Proving it has its finger firmly on the pulse of the corpse of America, the US Supreme Court on June 23 ruled that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, effectively upping the ante on concealed carry legislation that is sweeping the nation.  This in the wake of recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, with more than two-thirds of Americans polled supporting tougher gun regulation.  For more than a century, New York has had a gun safety law that bars the concealed carry of a firearm without a permit and requires good cause to obtain the permit; the conservative supermajority on the SCOTUS struck it down 6-3, ruling for the plaintiff in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.  The case was the first the SCOTUS had weighed in on Second Amendment issues since 2010.

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The Tulsa Hospital Shooting

On June 1, 2022, a disgruntled patient opened fire at his doctor’s office in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing four before turning the gun on himself.  Michael Louis, 45, had received surgery the month before for back pain, but found no relief.  Enraged, when his doctor failed to ease his suffering, he bought a .40 caliber Smith and Wesson semiautomatic handgun on May 29th, then an AR-15 style assault rifle just three hours before the shooting.

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Salvador Ramos: In the Mind of a Killer

By now we’ve all heard of the tragic events at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last week, on May 24th, where Salvador Ramos killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers, after shooting his grandmother.  Ramos used two AR-15 assault-style weapons on his rampage, which he had purchased within days of his 18th birthday the week prior.  It’s taken far too long for accurate details of the crime to emerge, with conflicting, not to say contradictory, reports about Ramos’ entry to the school, and a mystifying 40-minute delay in active response by law enforcement before terminating the gunman as a threat, exposing an astounding level of incompetence.

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