Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Saturday, 26 January 2013
"By naming the tragedy 12/14, we honor the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook School shooting, their families and their town. 12/14."
"Think it. Say it. Help Newtown heal."
I'm sorry, but no. If we take that approach, history will turn into numerical code and erstwhile ordinary days on the calendar will pop up each year as doomsdays, depressing some people and luring the crazies into copycatism.
Big events are normally named by the place where they happen, unless they are storms that we see coming and we name them like babies, when they are still cute like babies and haven't, like teenagers, shown their horrible tendencies.
9/11 was the exception to the rule, and this past year we got another 9/11 attack, in Benghazi. What do you do when these things pile up on the same day? It's not even random. The day fires up the imagination and focuses plans. I don't want a famous school massacre day called 12/14!
Protect our days, so that they continue to dawn as fresh new days, innocent and full of potential. Or let individuals infuse them with good memories, anniversaries of happiness like weddings and births.
Read more ►
I'm sorry, but no. If we take that approach, history will turn into numerical code and erstwhile ordinary days on the calendar will pop up each year as doomsdays, depressing some people and luring the crazies into copycatism.
Big events are normally named by the place where they happen, unless they are storms that we see coming and we name them like babies, when they are still cute like babies and haven't, like teenagers, shown their horrible tendencies.
9/11 was the exception to the rule, and this past year we got another 9/11 attack, in Benghazi. What do you do when these things pile up on the same day? It's not even random. The day fires up the imagination and focuses plans. I don't want a famous school massacre day called 12/14!
Protect our days, so that they continue to dawn as fresh new days, innocent and full of potential. Or let individuals infuse them with good memories, anniversaries of happiness like weddings and births.
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Why are gun-death statistics inflated with gun-suicide numbers?
"I thought we had a right to die...."
Obviously, one reason is: to get bigger numbers. But I think the people that lump gun deaths together believe (or want others to believe) that guns are really dangerous. When it comes to suicide, there are 2 ways to think about the deadly effectiveness of guns: 1. For those who really want to kill themselves, guns are a sensible choice, or 2. The scary deadliness of a gun tempts weak/impulsive persons to go ahead and do something that wouldn't happen otherwise.
You can easily see that those 2 ways to think represent the mindsets that lead to libertarian or authoritarian answers to all sorts of questions. #1 would allow the individual to make his own decisions and to take care of himself, and #2 thinks the individual — call her Julia — needs to be helped and protected (even from herself).
Sorry to go all gender-y, but I'm interested in talking about suicide and attitudes about guns in the context of gender difference, because 4x as many men as women commit suicide and 56% of male suicides use firearms compared to only 30% of female suicides. Those statistics are skewed by the fact that guns are an effective method. It might be that the gender disproportion is because men choose the method that leaves fewer survivors of attempts at suicide. I note that 40% of female suicides use "poisoning" (presumably, that includes drug overdosing). What's the proportion of females attempting suicide by poisoning to females succeeding in killing themselves with poison?
If you have a fantasy of rescuing those who are in the process of committing suicide, you might think taking guns away will give you a better shot.
ADDED: It occurred to me, after the Sandy Hook murders, that blaming guns is a secular substitute for blaming the devil. People find it too challenging to figure out why a human being would do this terrible thing and they latch on to the idea that the gun made it happen. Suicide presents a similar challenge, and one way to fathom it is to say: It was the gun. Isn't it like saying the devil made him do it? The gun/the devil is a great go-to answer, freeing you from wracking your brain about the workings of the human mind.
Read more ►
Obviously, one reason is: to get bigger numbers. But I think the people that lump gun deaths together believe (or want others to believe) that guns are really dangerous. When it comes to suicide, there are 2 ways to think about the deadly effectiveness of guns: 1. For those who really want to kill themselves, guns are a sensible choice, or 2. The scary deadliness of a gun tempts weak/impulsive persons to go ahead and do something that wouldn't happen otherwise.
You can easily see that those 2 ways to think represent the mindsets that lead to libertarian or authoritarian answers to all sorts of questions. #1 would allow the individual to make his own decisions and to take care of himself, and #2 thinks the individual — call her Julia — needs to be helped and protected (even from herself).
Sorry to go all gender-y, but I'm interested in talking about suicide and attitudes about guns in the context of gender difference, because 4x as many men as women commit suicide and 56% of male suicides use firearms compared to only 30% of female suicides. Those statistics are skewed by the fact that guns are an effective method. It might be that the gender disproportion is because men choose the method that leaves fewer survivors of attempts at suicide. I note that 40% of female suicides use "poisoning" (presumably, that includes drug overdosing). What's the proportion of females attempting suicide by poisoning to females succeeding in killing themselves with poison?
If you have a fantasy of rescuing those who are in the process of committing suicide, you might think taking guns away will give you a better shot.
ADDED: It occurred to me, after the Sandy Hook murders, that blaming guns is a secular substitute for blaming the devil. People find it too challenging to figure out why a human being would do this terrible thing and they latch on to the idea that the gun made it happen. Suicide presents a similar challenge, and one way to fathom it is to say: It was the gun. Isn't it like saying the devil made him do it? The gun/the devil is a great go-to answer, freeing you from wracking your brain about the workings of the human mind.
Friday, 11 January 2013
This gun control controversy is a real gift to Republicans.
It got them out of the morose election postmortem. Now, they're in their zone. Guns! — such invigorating shift from having to talk about Mitt Romney.
Righties should be sending thank you notes to Joe Biden.
ADDED: Biden actually said: "There is nothing that has pricked the consciousness of the American people (and) there is nothing that has gone to the heart of the matter more than the image people have of little 6-year-old kids riddled - not shot, but riddled, riddled - with bullet holes in their classroom."
Like it's all a matter of the capacity to visualize gore.
If we picture a bloody mincemeat of fetuses, then do we get to take away abortion rights?
Read more ►
Righties should be sending thank you notes to Joe Biden.
ADDED: Biden actually said: "There is nothing that has pricked the consciousness of the American people (and) there is nothing that has gone to the heart of the matter more than the image people have of little 6-year-old kids riddled - not shot, but riddled, riddled - with bullet holes in their classroom."
Like it's all a matter of the capacity to visualize gore.
If we picture a bloody mincemeat of fetuses, then do we get to take away abortion rights?
Thursday, 10 January 2013
Equal justice under the law — a proclamation in pictures.
Issued in 1816 in Van Diemen's Land, which is to say, Tasmania, in Australia, today's "History of" country.
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Professor who teaches a course called Culture of Conspiracy...
... is denounced for "inquir[ing] whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place — at least in the way law enforcement authorities and the nation's news media have described."
People these days seem to be so confused. If we hear about something terrible happening, it's as if talking about the details is equivalent to saying you don't care about the people who were hurt. This is a dangerous development, which itself ought to be examined as a possible conspiracy.
Read more ►
People these days seem to be so confused. If we hear about something terrible happening, it's as if talking about the details is equivalent to saying you don't care about the people who were hurt. This is a dangerous development, which itself ought to be examined as a possible conspiracy.
Sunday, 6 January 2013
"We knew the memorials can’t stand forever... And after being weathered... I mean, we had bad rain, we had a storm, we had wind, we had snow."
"So I knew the time was going to come where we really had to move the memorials. Not only because the tributes themselves start to look unkempt and start to communicate a message that wasn’t part of the honoring that the donor intended; it also signifies a moving on, a readiness for the community to go to that next step."
The age-old problem of roadside memorials, in the Newtown context.
Read more ►
The age-old problem of roadside memorials, in the Newtown context.
Friday, 4 January 2013
"We can’t go out and lock up all the socially awkward young men in the world..."
"But we have to try to prevent the unpredicted."
Says a psychiatrist quoted in a WaPo article titled "Predicting violence is a work in progress."
The photos at the link — a line-up of Jared Lee Loughner, James Holmes and Adam Lanza — create the impression that you can tell by looking at them, especially at their eyes. But if you look long enough, you'll see the 3 men are quite different. Only Loughner is smiling. One may sense that madness radiates out of his face, but if you can exclude what you know — that's a photo taken after his shooting spree — he may seem like a fairly ordinary guy. Holmes's face, especially stuck between those other 2, looks open — even empathetic — and sad. Lanza looks abnormal, like an alien. The oddness is enhanced by knowing that this isn't a mug shot like the other 2. Is that his driver's license pic? It's hard to believe — in this age of digital photography — that a picture that came out that bad wouldn't be trashed. If I were diagnosing Lanza from that photograph, I'd say his problem was anorexia. What that boy needs is cheeseburger*... and a better haircut.
Back to the WaPo article:
________________________________
*Adam Lanza was a vegan — "He didn't want to hurt animals."
Read more ►
Says a psychiatrist quoted in a WaPo article titled "Predicting violence is a work in progress."
The photos at the link — a line-up of Jared Lee Loughner, James Holmes and Adam Lanza — create the impression that you can tell by looking at them, especially at their eyes. But if you look long enough, you'll see the 3 men are quite different. Only Loughner is smiling. One may sense that madness radiates out of his face, but if you can exclude what you know — that's a photo taken after his shooting spree — he may seem like a fairly ordinary guy. Holmes's face, especially stuck between those other 2, looks open — even empathetic — and sad. Lanza looks abnormal, like an alien. The oddness is enhanced by knowing that this isn't a mug shot like the other 2. Is that his driver's license pic? It's hard to believe — in this age of digital photography — that a picture that came out that bad wouldn't be trashed. If I were diagnosing Lanza from that photograph, I'd say his problem was anorexia. What that boy needs is cheeseburger*... and a better haircut.
An analysis of 20 studies published three years ago found that schizophrenia increased the risk of acting violently fourfold in men and even more in women. The risk of schizophrenics committing homicide was 0.3 percent — more than 10 times greater than the average citizen.What is the risk of serious violence — not just homicide — for schizophrenics who are also young and male? What is the risk for young, male schizophrenics of the paranoid subtype? If we're going to reason from statistics, we need to be able to look at the numbers in different ways. I suspect that the 0.3 figure — which screams you can't just institutionalize schizophrenics — is massively diluted by including large numbers of females, over 30s, and the nonparanoid subtypes (disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated, and residual).
Back to the WaPo article:
John Monahan, a University of Virginia psychologist... and many others came up with a constellation of “risk factors” and “protective factors” for violent behavior.... [that] the presence of a mental disorder as only a small contributor to risk, outweighed by other factors such as age, previous violent acts, alcohol use, impulsivity, gang membership and lack of family support.Gang membership? Now, you've got a list of factors that's off the subject of mental illness and more about a young male's social context.
“From our research, we could quickly distinguish between a patient whose chance of being violent was 1-in-10 from one whose was 1-in-2,” [Monahan] said.Some statistics skepticism: he's saying "violent," not homicide or even serious violence.
[A British Medical Journal analysis found that of] the people predicted to “violently offend,” 41 percent did. Of those predicted to be nonviolent, 91 percent were. In practical terms, that meant that if authorities used the tools for the purposes of public health, they’d have to detain two people to prevent one from becoming violent.That is patently defective reasoning. Where did they draw the line in scoring individuals using their set of factors? Show me how the factors were scored and who ended up being violent. Why have you simply divided people into 2 groups? Look at different subsets within the predicted-to-be-violent group with the highest scores. For example, if you break out 10% of them, the predicted-to-be-violent ones with the highest scores, what percentage of them went on to commit acts of serious violence? If that approaches 100%, then the "practical terms" about the fairness of detention would look entirely different.
________________________________
*Adam Lanza was a vegan — "He didn't want to hurt animals."
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
"The attorney who said he would sue the state of Connecticut for $100 million after the Newtown school shooting is withdrawing his potential lawsuit..."
"... at least for now."
Read more ►
Irving Pinsky, who said Saturday he was filing the suit as a way to improve school safety, told the Connecticut Post that he’s received new information about security at Sandy Hook Elementary School and wants to review it....
"We all know its going to happen again," Pinsky said last week. "Society has to take action."Oh, Irving. Lawyers and their motives. What have you added to our thinking on the subject?
Monday, 31 December 2012
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
