Category Archives: Technology and Society

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Lies, Damned Lies…

9 Comments

…and gun-shooting statistics:

For a variety of reasons having to do with social and economic factors the firearms murder rate went down. What the current debate really seems to be about is whether rapid-fire guns increase the frequency of a special kind of crime called mass shootings. However, this is a somewhat artificial category. Mass shootings are a subset of the larger phenomenon of mass killings, sometimes referred to as rampage killings. “A rampage involves the (attempted) killing of multiple persons at least partly in public space by a single physically present perpetrator using (potentially) deadly weapons in a single event without any cooling-off period.”

It is one killer, one place, one time, many victims in a setting outside of war. The data collected on this type of even notes the type of weapon used, which is not always a firearm. It is mass killings that one would want to reduce, not just mass shootings.

The brothers in the Boston Marathon bombing didn’t use guns. As with the “War on Terror,” this is the insanity of going after inanimate objects, instead of the would-be murderers.

[Monday-morning update]

Six ways Bill Clinton lies about the “assault weapons” ban.

To be fair, though, Bill Clinton lies about a lot of things.

Business, Culinary, Economics, Health, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Former Vegans

5 Comments

…turned butchers:

“As soon as I started eating meat, my health improved,” she said. “My mental acuity stepped up, I lost weight, my acne cleared up, my hair got better. I felt like a fog lifted.” All of the meat was from healthy, grass-fed animals reared on the farms where she worked.

Other former vegetarians reported that they, too, felt better after introducing grass-fed meat into their diets: Ms. Kavanaugh said eating meat again helped with her depression. Mr. Applestone said he felt far more energetic.

“It can be hard to balance your diet as a vegetarian, especially when you’re younger, and I wasn’t doing it right,” he said.

I continue to hold out hope that we’ll be able to grow grass-fed beef in a lab.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Red-Flag Laws

4 Comments

Why they aren’t the solution to ending mass shootings.

[Update a while later]

Why do we ignore all the mass murder of blacks in places like Chicago?

I call racism.

[Update a while later]

Yes, red-flag laws are stupid and useless.

Which distinguishes them in no way from the other proposals from the Left to end mass shootings.

[Late-afternoon update]

OK, from a tweet about how everyone in Red States carries AR-15s to the grocery store, this is hilarious.

[Friday-morning update]

No, mass shootings are not becoming more common, and yes, the media is going completely nuts.