Again! Which part of this is “accidental?”

May 062013
 

This is awful, sure enough, but the WOODEN INSISTENCE in the media that such events are “accidental” is hilarious. If you leave two children alone with a loaded gun, the result just doesn’t seem accidental (as in “unexpected”).

Accident: An unexpected and undesirable event, especially one resulting in damage or harm: car accidents on icy roads.

This is an example of serious language degradation (or loss of brain function).

A 13-year-old boy shot his 6-year-old sister with a handgun at their Oakland Park, Fl. home on Saturday, where they appeared to be unsupervised.

“The siblings had been home alone when the teen found the handgun,” Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Dani Moschella said, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The girl was taken to Broward Health Medical Center where she is listed in critical but stable condition. The incident appeared to be an accidental shooting, according to Moschella.

via 13-Year-Old Boy Shoots 6-Year-Old Sister In Florida | TPM LiveWire.

Who Says The NRA Lacks Sensitivity & Good Taste?

May 062013
 

At its convention in Houston, over the weekend, the National Rifle Association asked a vendor to take down a mannequin target that looked like President Barack Obama, Buzzfeed reported on Sunday.

The vendor, Zombie Industries, produces “life-sized tactical mannequin” targets that “bleed” when shot. Photographs of the company’s booth at the convention taken by Buzzfeed show that the company had several sample mannequins displayed for sale, including a clown, a “terrorist,” and a Nazi.

via Vendor Pulls ‘Obama’ Target From Booth At NRA Convention | TPM LiveWire.

Forget the Unemployment Rate: The Alarming Stat Is the Number of ‘Missing Workers’

May 032013
 

Nothing to get excited about. Many Americans are just taking time off from work “to consider their options.” Many have vast IRAs and savings cushions and are just waiting out the current anemic jobs situation till the really plum opportunities start to open up. I myself am waiting for that important call from “a major banking concern” asking me to step into a “senior management position.” (At which point I will shut down Numéro Cinq.)

dg

The federal government’s latest snapshot of the unemployment rate offered few bright spots Friday. The economy added 165,000 jobs in April—slightly better than March’s revised number of 138,000 jobs. Unemployment went down one-tenth of a percentage point to 7.5 percent; and health care, retail trade, and the food-services industry added positions.

The glaring caveat to this jobs report is the huge number of Americans who remain out of the workforce. Called the “labor force participation rate” in wonkspeak, that number held steady in April at 63.3 percent—the lowest level since 1979.

via Forget the Unemployment Rate: The Alarming Stat Is the Number of ‘Missing Workers’ – NationalJournal.com.

Suicide Rate Rises Sharply in U.S. – NYTimes.com

May 022013
 

No doubt this is mostly smart people getting sick to death of paralytic politics.

From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 population, up from 13.7. Although suicide rates are growing among both middle-age men and women, far more men take their own lives. The suicide rate for middle-age men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000.

via Suicide Rate Rises Sharply in U.S. – NYTimes.com.

Donald Kagan: ‘Democracy May Have Had Its Day’ – WSJ.com

Apr 292013
 

Education and politics both seem to have lost a rudder. I watched my son Jacob go through the University of King’s College Foundation Year Programme in Halifax, a reading year devoted to old fashioned Great Books and a history of Western Culture. It did not make him narrow-minded and racist; it taught him to think and gave him a basis of self-understanding upon which to reach out and understand the larger world while critiquing his own immediate surroundings. If I were a kid getting ready for university, I would be breaking down the doors of that little school.

Here is an interview with Yale Classics Professor Donald Kagan on the university and the culture wars (which we have lost).

dg

Universities, he proposed, are failing students and hurting American democracy. Curricula are “individualized, unfocused and scattered.” On campus, he said, “I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness.” Rare are “faculty with atypical views,” he charged. “Still rarer is an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values.” He counseled schools to adopt “a common core of studies” in the history, literature and philosophy “of our culture.” By “our” he means Western.

via The Weekend Interview with Donald Kagan: ‘Democracy May Have Had Its Day’ – WSJ.com.

How People Die — Run For The Exits

Apr 282013
 

So, in contrast to some other causes of death, terrorism doesn’t rank all that high. And, if you look at the country stats, most terrorism deaths currently take place in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is the objective, statistical view. Which does have some impact, say, on how one generally calculates one’s vulnerability while drinking coffee at Max London’s in downtown Saratoga Springs. There is another calculation, the hypothetical calculation of a person killed in ANY terrorist attack ANYWHERE. In that view, the statistics don’t matter much.

causes-of-death-300x247

(source)

From A Brief History of the State of Exception [State of Emergency] by Giorgio Agamben

Apr 272013
 

Here’s a link to a text by Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben whose theories about the contrary tendencies in states between supreme executive powers and legislative powers (the government vs the individual, more or less) are particularly apropos since the events of 9/11 created a fresh context for what he calls a “state of exception.” Something to think about.

dg

The place—both logical and pragmatic—of a theory of the state of exception in the American constitution is in the dialectic between the powers of the president and those of Congress. This dialectic has taken shape historically (and in an exemplary way already beginning with the Civil War) as a conflict over supreme authority in an emergency situation; or, in Schmittian terms (and this is surely significant in a country considered to be the cradle of democracy), as a conflict over sovereign decision.

The textual basis of the conflict lies first of all in Article 1 of the constitution, which establishes that “the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it” but does not specify which authority has the jurisdiction to decide on the suspension (even though prevailing opinion and the context of the passage itself lead one to assume that the clause is directed at Congress and not the president). The second point of conflict lies in the relation between another passage of Article 1 (which declares that the power to declare war and to raise and support the army and navy rests with Congress) and Article 2, which states that “the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”

via A Brief History of the State of Exception by Giorgio Agamben.

Turgenev and the Boston Bombing @ Informed Comment

Apr 202013
 

Speculative but deeply informed on context: Trust Juan Cole to provide a more nuanced analysis of the Chechen/Muslim matrix at the back of the Boston bombings. The novels of Conrad and Turgenev and Dostoevsky tell us more about the psychology of terrorism than a lot of the current media outlets.

The anger and embarrassment visible in the interviews given on Friday by the uncle and the aunt of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, are entirely understandable.

But I see clues here to family dynamics that may be important in understanding what happened. In Ivan Turgenev’s 1862, novel, “Fathers and Sons,” the old man’s son, Arkady, comes back home after studies with a friend, Bazarov, after both had adopted the radical philosophy of Nihilism. Their radicalism roiled the family for a while, until Bazarov’s death. (Later, in 1881, Nihilists assassinated Tsar Alexander II).

via Fathers and Sons and Chechnya | Informed Comment.

Educating a girl can save the world @ Asia Times Online

Apr 172013
 

Occasionally, the Omens Blog finds a story about which one need not be cynical. This one goes straight to the heart of gender issues worldwide. I love the movie title: Girl Rising.

dg

While women’s schooling has been demonstrably related to child survival and other childhood outcomes beneficial to children in the developing world, the “cultural pathways” that underline these statistical connections have not been fully explored. Now, there is a very touching yet powerful documentary film, Girl Rising, which raises our awareness of this universal truth – by educating a girl, you can actually change the world.

via Asia Times Online :: Educating a Girl can save the world.

4-year-old grabs loaded gun at family BBQ and accidentally kills wife of Tennessee sheriff’s deputy

Apr 092013
 

Wait a sec! “Accident!” Loaded gun lying on a bed, party, 4-year-old wandering around — which part of this was the accident? What is the difference between “accident” and, say, “stupidity.”

On the other hand, there is the NRA argument: If all the guests at the party had been similarly armed, there is a chance they could have shot the 4-yr-old first and thus saved a life. Now there’s a thought.

NASHVILLE — Authorities say a 4-year-old boy grabbed a loaded gun at a family cookout and accidentally shot and killed the wife of a Tennessee sheriff’s deputy.

via 4-year-old grabs loaded gun at family BBQ and accidentally kills wife of Tennessee sheriff’s deputy | News | National Post.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries