1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

5. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.

9. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

Among the reasons widely adduced for not doing something about Cho's violent proclivities are HIPAA and FERPA, the confidentiality laws for health records and college students' records. Well, there's no FERPA for high schools. There is merely the weird cultural refusal to turn in bad actors to adult authority. In one school attack, so many students knew it was coming that 24 were waiting on a mezzanine to watch, one with a camera. The enemy is us.

Prior to the studied assaults, some 93% of the attackers behaved in ways that caused concern to school officials, teachers, parents, the cops or other students. "In one case, the student's English teacher became concerned about several poems and essays that . . ." well, you know the rest.

Psychological flameouts were indeed present in virtually all the attacks--depression (61%), prior suicidal attempts or thoughts (78%), a sense of loss, feelings of being persecuted or in fact bullied.

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What this means is that some college presidents, and their lawyers, rather than rolling over before those confidentiality laws, should tell some aggrieved student who is refusing to take the medication prescribed for his psychosis: So sue! Let a judge decide whether 32 deaths warrant a reconsideration of these restrictions.

"If NBC had not aired the material, we would be speculating about motives and background and all the rest."

Nice strawman. I haven't heard anyone arguing that the media shouldn't have told us about Cho's videos or what was on them. Rather, that the media shouldn't have broadcast the actual videos.

When someone streaks the ball field they usually tell us what's going on, they just don't put the guy on TV. The sports announcers have also taken to giving some rather cruel descriptions of the guy's physical inadequacies.

Do we really want to give a forum to every nut who screams to the world "Look at me! Look at me!"?? That's exactly what NBC News did. We recognize that it encourages streakers, why can't we recognize that it encourages copy cat killers?

Which is the biggest threat to Wyoming's wildlife?

How many people you know own guns?

Would more or fewer guns make us safer? Do we need new gun laws or better enforcement of existing laws?

Handguns account for much of this growth, and semiautomatic pistols - the type of gun Cho used in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history - have replaced six-shot revolvers as the handgun of choice. Easy to carry and conceal, handguns dominate homicide statistics. In 2005, according to the FBI, they were used to commit eight times as many slayings as shotguns and rifles combined.

After the Columbine massacre, a New York Times study found the death toll from rampage killings grew through the 1990s. It noted the shift coincided with semiautomatic pistols overtaking revolvers in handgun production.

Cho also took advantage of Congress' decision to let a national assault-weapons ban - which also limited ammunition clips to 10 rounds - expire in 2004. He bought a semiautomatic Glock pistol with easily reloadable 15-round magazines, which he used with ruthless efficiency.

"Where there's more guns, there's more gun homicide," said David Hemenway, director of Harvard's Injury Control Research Center.

In his book, "Private Guns, Public Health," Hemenway calculated that children ages 5 to 14 in the United States were 17 times as likely to become gun- murder victims as children in the 25 other richest nations.

Wall Street Journal -- But over the past decade and a half, evidence of another sort has been accumulating. Violent-crime rates peaked in 1991, according to the Justice Department, and have fallen steeply since. Over the same period, gun-control laws in many states have been relaxed. Correlation does not equal causation, but it does make it difficult to argue that greater legal access to guns drives up levels of violent crime.

LAREDO, Texas (AP) -- U.S. Sen. John McCain says the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech does not change his view that the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to carry a weapon.

"We have to look at what happened here, but it doesn't change my views on the Second Amendment, except to make sure that these kinds of weapons don't fall into the hands of bad people," McCain said Monday in response to a question.

The best we can do is enact policies that will reduce the death toll when these acts of carnage occur, as they will in a free and open society of 300 million people, most of whom have cable TV.

Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws. In a comprehensive study of all public, multiple-shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, the inestimable economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that concealed-carry laws were the only laws that had any beneficial effect.

McLEAN, Va. - A judge's ruling on Cho Seung-Hui's mental health should have barred him from purchasing the handguns he used in the Virginia Tech massacre, according to federal regulations. But it was unclear whether anybody had an obligation to inform federal authorities because of loopholes in the law that governs background checks.

Cho purchased two handguns in February and March, and was subject to federal and state background checks both times. The checks turned up no problems, despite a judge's ruling in December 2005 that Cho "presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness."

JACKSON -- Federal officials Monday said Wyoming must submit a new wolf management plan by May 1 to meet administrative and legal requirements to allow removal of federal protection of wolves by February 2008 -- the deadline contained in a new state law giving Gov. Dave Freudenthal authority to negotiate the boundaries of a permanent wolf management area in northwest Wyoming to meet federal approval.

But the governor says that under the law approved by the Legislature during its recent session, Wyoming can't adopt a new wolf management plan until the federal government changes its rules to allow killing of wolves to protect big game animals before delisting. Federal officials have begun the process of amending the rules to allow such wolf control, but the changes aren't expected to be finalized until next year.

Assuming they stop in Wyoming because of the early primary next year, which Republican presidential candidate do you want to see?

Glenn Reynolds -- I think there's an overall loss of faith in America's political class, which seems to me to be largely warranted.

Kaycee, Wyoming, April 9, 1892 -- Hour after hour, they poured lead through the windows of the KC ranch cabin where he was holed up, but Nate Champion was not a man to give up easily. He had plenty of ammunition and held the “invaders,” who were bent on killing all suspected rustlers, at bay for seven hours. In doing so, he gave the people of the county time to learn of the battle at the KC and take measures to stop the insurrection and any further killings.

When the invaders, in desperation and frustration, finally set fire to the cabin, Champion, with a pistol in one hand and a rifle in the other, ran out the back door and headed for the protection of a nearby ravine. Unfortunately, two expert marksmen were standing there just out of sight, and when Champion came into view, they fired. Other invaders followed suit until Champion’s body was riddled with bullets -- a total of 32 were counted.

It had taken a small army of influential cattle ranchers and their hired guns to take him down, and even they had to admit he was one brave man.

Finally, what depresses me, and makes me despise so much war criticism even when I agree with it, is that so many of those positing it seem so happy about what's gone wrong. They seem to relish the probability that Iraq will get worse and worse so that they can be righter and righter.

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Like liberals - and thinking conservatives, and sentient beings -- everywhere, I gravely doubt that the troop surge - so little so late -- will do anything to save Iraq. But for the sake of the Iraqi people, I sure hope it does - even if that helps the Republicans.

Al Gore will have no trouble finding in Monday's Supreme Court ruling more evidence that global warming is a reality, indeed a dire threat.

He will soon say--you can take this to the bank--words like: "Now, even a majority of the Supreme Court has recognized the danger of global warming." And he'll be right in the sense that the Court invokes the magic word "consensus" for a physical fact that itself is unproven, unprovable and exists purely in the realm of speculation.

Al Gore has made himself, in his curious way, the personification of a society's impulse to manufacture political certainty out of irresolvable scientific uncertainty, of which the Supreme Court is the latest culprit/victim. You can see this by arranging the questions related to global warming in descending order of urgency.

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The consensus that human activities are causing global warming is purely a social invention--there's no way of showing it to be so, and no self-evident reason for preferring to believe it's so. The "consensus" is, in truth, a product of itself.

Maybe those parents offended by a proposed war memorial in Littleton believe that freedom can be defended using snappy bumper stickers.

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A peace dove ...

You know what? When a dove can protect our children from religious fanatics who'd like to behead them, I'll visit the National Peace Dove Memorial.

Reached at home Thursday in Virginia Beach, Va., Patsy Dietz, Dietz's widow, said she sympathizes with the message that guns and schools shouldn't mix, especially in the community where the Columbine shootings took place.

But to use her husband to forge such a political statement about guns is irresponsible, she said.

"It's a parent's job, including these parents who are protesting, to teach their children the difference between two thugs who murder their classmates and a soldier who died fighting for their freedom," she said. "Danny represents every soldier and sailor who has fallen, and for them to take this stand, well, that's offensive to me."

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"A statue of a soldier holding a child would send a better message," said Calvin Freehling, a Vietnam veteran from Indianola, Neb., who e-mailed The Denver Post. "An automatic weapon doesn't signify protection. It signifies violence. I'm 64 years old now, and I'm tired of violence."

Ann Levy of Denver, who calls herself a "peacenik," would like to see Dietz's sacrifice honored in a different way.

"They should be putting up a peace dove instead," she said. "The question is do we stand for peace or do we stand for war?"

If Bush and Cheney were really evil, they'd both resign and stick the Democrats with a Pelosi Presidency for the next two years. The Democratic Party would never recover. Alas, neither would the country.

CHEYENNE -- Gov. Dave Freudenthal wrote to the regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday saying it would be virtually impossible for the state to adopt a new wolf management plan by May 1.

Federal officials, meanwhile, say it's critical for Wyoming to submit a wolf management plan soon if the state is to be included in federal regulations scheduled to be released next year spelling out how the wolves will be removed from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal's unbending stand on wolves may be working. Federal officials are making concessions that at one time would have been unthinkable:

* Outside northwest Wyoming, once wolves are removed from federal Endangered Species Act protection, they will be subject to unregulated killing. That's a dramatic departure from the original federal position, which called for wolves to be treated as trophy game outside national parks.

* The number of wolf packs that must be maintained outside Wyoming's national parks after delisting has been narrowed to seven. That makes it likely that state agents will seek to wipe out 16 wolf packs when delisting takes place.

* The federal government is pursuing a rule change to allow Wyoming to kill wolves to protect wildlife, even before wolf delisting. That most recent development is a remarkable shift, which some would argue runs afoul of the Endangered Species Act.

At this rate, it wouldn't be all that surprising to see the feds cave in on other fronts. Heck, the governor has made it clear he'd be happiest if wolves were found only in Idaho and Montana. Maybe that will be his next demand.

Enough of the anti-fed, anti-wolf rhetoric. It's time for Wyoming's leaders to strike a deal and finally put wolf delisting on the road to reality.

Thanks to modern neuro-imaging technology, we now know that our minds - our conscious, mental life - are a product of activity in the brain. What Libet’s and subsequent experiments show is that even when we have the conscious experience of deciding, our brains have really already taken the decision for us. Free will is an illusion.

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When we know that the structure of someone’s brain makes them very likely to be a menace to society, we will increasingly be faced with the choice of medically intervening - even forcibly - or knowing that we could have prevented a terrible crime. ”The interventions may not always be pretty, but of course going to prison is not pretty either,” says Churchland.

Which is not to say wolves have no effect on game populations. Each adult wolf kills an average of 22 elk a year. There are now about 96 adult wolves in Yellowstone, so they take just over 2,000 elk a year. But the overall impact on population is less than the total number would suggest, because research shows that wolves often kill prey animals that are less likely -- for one reason or another -- to contribute to the elk gene pool in the following year. If the elk population is declining, wolf predation may accelerate the decline. If it’s growing, they may slow the growth.

LONDON - Britain examined options Sunday for new dialogue with Tehran over the seized crew of 15 sailors and marines, as a poll suggested most Britons back the government's goal of resolving the standoff through diplomacy.

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A poll published in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper found that 66 percent of respondents trusted Blair and Beckett to resolve the crisis, while 28 percent did not. Only 7 percent thought the government should be preparing to use military force.