Facts I have learned about the British today:

1. Southwark = "suth-erk"
2. The Tube is basically like the TTC, except apparently British people are quite short because the ceiling is about six foot at the max.
3. 5p looks like a dime, 10p looks like a quarter, 2p looks like a loonie, and the tiny, unassuming bronze thing is a pound.
4. "Walk left stand right" is exactly the same as back home, not the opposite, as I was told it would be.
5. Although it LOOKS like you can go through a Tube gate with your Oyster card from either direction, this is not true. There is a tiny X or green check telling you if you can pass through that side or not.
6. Street signs. Where are they?

USING GUNS TO STOP PEOPLE FROM USING GUNS IS A GREAT IDEA, YOU GUYS

I am late to the party on this one but I spend too much time trawling the Internet and running across macros like these in the months since the tragedy at Sandy Hook:

The NRA (and apparently some young people with too much time on their hands) believe that teachers should be armed to defend against school shooters. This is a terrible, terrible idea. The argument that one needs guns to defend oneself from other maniacs with guns is bullshit; what is really necessary is better control, licensing, and regulation, so that nobody has a gun and everybody avoids ballistics-related injuries at school. Virtually all of the weapons used in school shootings are obtained legally and legitimately, but the NRA somehow thinks the problem lies in a LACK of guns.

I mean, sure, it’s technically possible to fix a problem with more of that same problem. For example, the government could probably get rid of drug dealers by importing and distributing kilos and kilos of heroin – effectively flooding the market, dropping the price of a piece through the floor, and putting dealers out of business. But you don’t see anybody jumping at THAT plan, do you? Just because something will technically work doesn’t automatically make it the best plan, or even a feasible one.

Arming teachers is a similarly terrible idea. This residual Cold-War obsession with mutually assured destruction doesn’t work on a small scale because school shooters aren’t afraid of their own destruction. Arming teachers doesn’t keep maniacs out of schools, it just increases the likelihood that more children will be caught in the crossfire.

Oh, also? The spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry says the comparison between terrorism in Israel and school shootings in the US is nonsense, and that Israel actually depends on incredibly strict gun licensing laws. Nice try, Neo-Republican Assholes.