And here’s what we have today, in our first post-influenza edition:
- Rice withdraws candidacy for secretary of state (WashPost) — I feel a little better now; I was really starting to worry about her.
- Syria government ‘losing control’ – Russian official (BBC) — And if the Russians are saying it… things are not looking up for Assad.
- Firm wants to offer another year of credit monitoring in SC (thestate.com) — And the hacking beat goes on.
- Global life expectancy on the rise (The Guardian) — Seemed like an interesting take-note-of sort of item…
- Boehner appears to ease on tax rise (The Guardian) — Meanwhile, the speaker is meeting with the president.
- Sheheen drops fund-raising hint of 2014 rematch with Haley (thestate.com) — That’s the way The State is playing it anyway. I saw the same fund-raising email, and didn’t really see it as definitely moving the needle. Basically, Vincent was capitalizing on the news story that shows him outpolling Nikki.
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I love it how people like Rice state, “I’ve been a public servant all my life”. Since when are you a “servant” when you’ve been paid a six figure salary the whole time? She was a paid government employee.
I’m not usually one to push causes that aren’t strictly charitable in nature but this one has caught my attention. It’s an effort to get a star placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for the last living silent film star – Baby Peggy. She is still active at age 94 and in her time made an incredible contribution to the motion picture industry. Seems like $36,000 is a pretty small price to pay to honor such a legendary, yet not well known, actress.
http://astarforbabypeggy.com/
@Bud
Maybe Baby Peggy should speak up…
Another school shooting. 18 more children along with at least 9 adults savagely slaughtered. With the highest concentration of guns of any nation on earth doesn’t it seem logical to conclude that this whole second ammendment worship is really not making us safer? The NRA has won on the issues but the rest of us lose on what really matters, safety.
Doug, Baby Peggy supports the fund raising effort but is not actively involved. If you get a chance a chance watch Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room. For any film buff this is an absolute must see. I was very moved by the story of her incredible life.
@bud – The problem isn’t with the number of guns, but with the places you aren’t allowed as a law abiding citizen are allowed to carry. One of these location is public schools which is why they’re easy targets for people like this.
If Baby Peggy wants a star, I’m sure she’d made enough to buy one. Which is the way I’m hearing those who want one are getting them these days. It’ll only be time before Honey Boo Boo gets one.
It’s not Baby Peggy that wants the star it’s her fans that feel she earned it. Not everyone is an egotist.
That’s right SD II, lets arm all the kindergarten teachers, maybe the kids too, that will surely make things safer.
@bud – Had someone in that school today had a weapon besides the gunman, would it have changed things?
@bud – A man in China attacked 22 people at a school with a knife today. Should we ban knives too?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-attacks-22-kids-knife-china-school-article-1.1220230
A person with a knife is a lot easier to contain and can do a lot less damage!
Also it takes a lot more guts to use a knife than to use a gun.
Yeah, they finally contained the knife attacker after he attacked the 23rd victim.
You’re a coward either way, you go into a grade school with the intention of killing or injuring children there’s not a lot of people who are going to defend you. The only good thing that came out of this is he killed himself so parents and taxpayers wouldn’t have to go through a trial to send him to prison or hand down a death sentence. Had he lived, personally I wouldn’t have spent the money to kill him, I would have just pushed him down the steps of the courthouse where the parents would be waiting for him. Ever notice things went to hell once they quit public hangings?
I don’t know if “guts” is the word, but you’re right, most humans are FAR less likely to use an edged weapon against another person than to pull a trigger.
I’m just finishing my off-and-on reading of Grossman’s book On Killing, which is among other things about the powerful human resistance to killing. He demonstrates that for most of military history in the age of firearms (before Vietnam), only about 15 percent of soldiers actually fired their weapons in combat. And of those, only about two to four percent actually aimed at the enemy with deadly intent.
Then how, you wonder, were so many people killed in wars? Because millions of rounds were fired, that’s why. Also… most deaths occurred from artillery or (in the past century) bombing or from crew-served heavy machine guns — NOT from deliberate small-arms fire by one soldier trying to kill another.
There’s a hierarchy of willingness to fire. Crews of artillery or bombers or crew-served machine guns are FAR more likely to fire, with deadly accuracy, than soldiers with individual small arms, both because of the physical/emotional distance provided by their weapons, and because it was harder for them to shirk the duty to kill, as members of a team.
But the reluctance to use edged weapons, up close and personal, was greater than that of the rifleman. And the resistance to killing with bare hands is even greater. The HARDER it is to kill, and the more intimate the act, the greater the reluctance.
There is also a hierarchy of fear in combat that follows the same pattern. Men are more terrified of being stabbed with a bayonet, for instance, than being shot. (It’s a more MORALLY HORRIFYING idea.) Which makes the few instances in which bayonet charges occur so effective in terms of causing the enemy to flee.
Oh, I mentioned Vietnam. Since Vietnam, the operant conditioning techniques used in U.S. military training has led to 90 percent firing rates. That’s why, for instance, on Oct. 3, 1993 in Mogadishu, about 1,000 Somalis were killed in the course of killing 18 Americans…
One of the themes of the book — although in the end it wasn’t developed as strongly as I thought it was going to be — was that this “shoot first and think about it later” combat conditioning since Vietnam has led to a lot more PTSD.