I’ll Take a Shot at It

First, some statistics about guns in the United States:

FACT: A gun kept in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in a homicide, suicide or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.
- Kellerman AL, Lee RK, Mercy JA, et al. "The Epidemiological Basis for the Prevention of Firearm Injuries." Annu. Rev. Public Health. 1991; 12:17-40

FACT: As of 1994, 44 million Americans owned more than 192 million firearms, 65 million of which were handguns. Although there were enough guns to have provided every U.S. adult with one, only 25% of adults owned firearms. Seventy-four percent (74%) of gun owners possessed two or more firearms.
- National Institute of Justice, May 1997

FACT:In 2003 (the most recent year for which data is available), there were 30,136 gun deaths in the U.S:

* 16,907 suicides (56% of all U.S gun deaths),
* 11,920 homicides (40% of all U.S gun deaths),
* 730 unintentional shootings (2% of all U.S gun deaths),
* 347 from legal intervention and 232 from undetermined intent (2% of all U.S gun deaths combined).
Numbers obtained from CDC National Center for Health Statistics mortality report online, 2006.

FACT: Here is a comparison of U.S. gun homicides to other industrialized countries. Of course, one should take into account the disparity in population between the United States and these nations. But still....
In 1998 (the most recent year for which this data has been compiled), handguns murdered:

* 373 people in Germany
* 151 people in Canada
* 57 people in Australia
* 19 people in Japan
* 54 people in England and Wales, and
* 11,789 people in the United States

FACT: Among 26 industrialized nations, 86% of gun deaths among children under age 15 occurred in the United States.
- Provided by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

Gun advocates like to say guns don't literally kill, and they're right.
People do.
Problem is, people keep killing people with guns.

In 2005, the San Diego Unified School District received 56 reports involving plastic toy guns that were replicas of real guns. Some of guns actually fired plastic BBs by compressed air, endangering not the lives but mainly the eyes of fellow students. In view of the shootings with real guns that have occurred at several schools nationwide, school officials ordered lockdowns on several campuses when some students were seen carrying the replicas.

An investigation revealed that these so-called toy guns, which were made to look like actual weapons, were being sold to the students by ice-cream vendors that cruised near the schools.

A City Council committee has requested that a new ordinance be created to keep the vendors at least a thousand feet away from schools and to permit them to sell only food. But the replicas would still be available from other commercial outlets.

On another note, the Outkast star Andre 3000, a rapper, has been widely criticized by Mothers Against Guns for saying that he would like to buy a gun for his 9-year-old son. He is quoted as saying: “I would want my son to carry a gun when he gets older. It’s just something you have got to have if you want to be safe.”

Has It Been a Whole Year?

One year ago today (November 20, 2005), I posted this little gem on Blogstream. It was my first blog post, and it received one comment filled with vitriol by a Bush lover. I was so shocked, I deleted the comment.

Guess Who Got The Bill?

In the recent Hurricane Katrina disaster, the poor (Ninth Ward in New Orleans) got the misery; the rich (Halliburton, Fluor, Bechtel, and Carnival Cruises) got the money; and guess who got the bill? Not the wealthy 1% of taxpayers who have received over $850 billion in tax relief since 2001; not Carnival Cruises, which for tax purposes is incorporated in Panama, allowing it to pay a mere three million dollars in income tax on a pretax income of nearly two billion dollars last year. If your guess is middle-class taxpayers, their children, and grandchildren - congratulations, you have an excellent memory.

A Penny for Your Thoughts

After several unsuccessful attempts to become pregnant by artificial insemination, a woman having just undergone another AI procedure spots a heads up penny on the floor and is elated, believing that this time the penny would bring her the good luck she needed to become pregnant. After hearing this story, I decided to research how finding a heads up penny would lead one to believe that it would bring good luck. What I found was very interesting.

First of all, the belief that a heads up penny brings good luck is, of course, a superstition. And what is a superstition? A superstition is simply a fixed irrational notion held stubbornly in the face of evidence to the contrary. Luck is that which happens beyond a person's control. A superstition is a way of making an individual feel in control of a situation.

A rationalist approach to luck includes the application of the rules of probability, and an avoidance of unscientific beliefs. The rationalist feels the belief in luck is a result of poor reasoning or wishful thinking. To a rationalist, a believer in luck commits the post hoc logical fallacy:

A happens (luck-attracting event or action) and then B happens;
Therefore, A caused B.

A good example of a post hoc fallacy is as follows:

Roosters crow just before the sun rises.
Therefore, roosters crowing cause the sun to rise.

A person walks under a ladder and an object falls on his or her head.
Therefore, walking under a ladder causes an object to fall on his or her head (bad luck).
Now it is claimed that it is bad luck to walk under a ladder.

As a rational person, you are walking down the street when you spot a ladder leaning against a building. You realize that there is most likely a reason for the ladder being there. Perhaps there are workers on the roof doing repair or painting or something to that effect and you realize that something could fall on you from above if you walk near or under the ladder. Being the cautious person that you are, you steer clear of the ladder, not because you are superstitious but because you realize the inherent danger in the situation. But if you are uninformed or unthinking, you will continue walking right under the ladder when suddenly a hammer or a bucket of paint falls on your head from above. A rational person would understand that perhaps about once every ten thousand times that someone walks under a ladder, something might fall from above and hit him or her. But to a superstitious person, it was walking under the ladder that caused the problem (bad luck).

Now, let’s get back to the penny.

If a penny is on the floor and it’s on tails, ignore it.
If you come across a penny and it’s on tails, don’t pick it up because it’s bad luck.
If the penny is heads up, pick it up and you’ll have good luck.
If a penny is heads down, don’t pick it up; just turn it over. The next person who sees the penny heads up should pick it up so that both of you share in the good luck.

If you see a penny on the ground and it’s heads up and you pick it up, you won’t get the good luck unless you kiss the penny.
But what happens when you pick up a heads up penny and in mid-lift it falls from your grip and lands tails up? Is it still good luck or does it become bad luck?
You see a tails up penny and kick it, it hits a wall and flips over to heads. Does that become good luck?

If you find a heads up penny, you should pick it up, and then say out loud, “Find a penny pick it up, and in 24 hours you’ll have good luck.”
If you find a penny and it’s heads up, it will bring good luck only if you place it in your left shoe.
If you find a penny on tails, throw it over your shoulder and don't look back; and then make a wish.

As you can see, there are many variations of and additions to the superstition regarding the luck contained in a penny on the ground

As for the woman who was elated because she saw a heads up penny, I don‘t know whether or not she became pregnant. But if she did, I am reasonably certain that the heads up penny had nothing to do with it.

What do you think?

Are You a Hug Bug?

As I was cleaning out my nightstand drawer recently, I ran across a “Hug Coupon”, which someone gave to me over 20 years ago. The coupon reads, “This coupon is redeemable for one warm embrace when presented to an eligible recipient.” When one turns over the coupon and reads the back, the following message appears:

“Hugs Called Good Medicine. A California social scientist believes hugging to be good medicine. It transfers energy and gives the person hugged an emotional boost. For good emotional health we are told that we need four hugs a day for survival, eight for maintenance and twelve for growth. A hug is a form of communication because it can say things you don’t have words for.”

Different hugs exist for different purposes. There are hugs that speak of security, confidence, trust, and sharing that no words can express quite as well.

Someone once said that the mind analyzes and the heart hugs. The mind causes disease and the heart heals. Since hugging is a form of nourishment for the soul, a child needs hugs in order to grow into a wholesome being. Just as a child’s body needs food, so does the child’s soul require love expressed through hugging.

Hugging requires a sender and a receiver. If you need a hug, let the other person know; if you receive a hug, let the other individual know that you are appreciative.

The word “hug” is probably of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse hugga, to comfort. The origin of the word thus describes one of the chief benefits of hugging - “to comfort“. My wife and I hug often. Sometimes when we meet in a hallway or in the kitchen, or anywhere else in the house, we will stop and hug each other for a minute or two, often without saying a word. The hug says much more than can be expressed in words. A hug can have multiple meanings: I love you. I value you. I am so happy to be with you. Thank you for choosing me to share your life with. We are soul mates.

The following story appeared in a newspaper in Massachusetts:

April 5, 2006

MAYNARD, Mass. -- A family in Maynard is outraged after their 5-year-old daughter was forced to write a letter denouncing hugging after a classmate embraced her.

NewsCenter 5's Amalia Barreda reported that Brenda Brier and Michael Marino pulled their daughter, Savannah, out of school early Wednesday. The couple was angry after a meeting with officials at the Greenmeadow Elementary School in Maynard, where Savannah is in kindergarten.

At issue is a hug Savannah said she got on the playground from a friend named Sophie. Savannah hugged Sophie back. The hugs resulted in Savannah having to write a letter, complete with teacher corrections, that read, "I touch Sophie because she touch me and I didn't like it because she was hugging me. I didn't like when she hugged me."

"She said, 'I'm really sad that I got in trouble for hugging,'" Brier said.

"I can understand if boys are playing rough or kids are pulling each other around -- that's one thing. But when kids are being affectionate, I mean hugging, hey, they shouldn't be disciplined over it and they shouldn't be lying in letters making the kid say the opposite that they don't like to hug," Marino said.

How about you? Are you a hug bug? Are you giving and receiving your full quota of hugs each day?

Here is a special hug for kktaylorcc (Love and Light from Healing Creek): Hugggggggggggggggz.

Yoppies, Moppies, and Oopies

Back in the 1980s the acronym “YUPPIE” appeared in the media for the first time. Demographers have used the term to refer to people who are generally between the ages of their late twenties to mid-thirties, usually employed in a professional job, and often living in an urban setting. Yuppies tend to earn in the upper middle class income range at an early age. They have a lifestyle that is filled with expensive “toys” such as cars, kitchen gadgetry, hobby equipment, the latest electronic anything. Yuppie has come to represent: people who purchase items just because they are expensive; people who pay less attention to family life and place more emphasis on “showing off new toys” while entertaining friends, and working more, to the neglect of other priorities, to make even more money. Demographically speaking, the word “YUPPIE” is useful in describing a group of people by referring to their age (Young), their location (Urban), and their class (Professional).

Some offshoots of “YUPPIE” are the acronyms YIPPIE, sometimes used to refer to a person with hippie values and attire but with yuppie consumer habits; BUPPIE, a black urban professional with the same values as Yuppies; DINKS, or Dual Income, No Kids, well-off couples who have some of the same values as Yuppies, but usually have more wealth because they both work and have no children; and finally, GUPPIES, gay urban professionals who like the Yuppie lifestyle.

In the last 75 years, we have witnessed the appearance of an increasing number of older Americans:

There were 36.3 million people 65 and older in the United States on July 1, 2004. This age group accounted for 12 percent of the total population. Between 2003 and 2004, the size of this age group increased by 351,000 people.


Projected population of people 65 and older in the year 2050 is 86.7 million. People in this age group would comprise 21 percent of the total population at that time.


In view of this rapidly growing increase in the number of older Americans, I see the need for new acronyms to describe the different older age groups; therefore, I propose that the following acronyms be used:

YOPPIES - these are Young-Old Persons (ages 50-65)

MOPPIES - these are Medium-Old Persons (ages 66-85)

OOPIES - these are Old-Old Persons (ages 86+)

Each of these age groups will have different needs, and demographers will need new terminology to refer to them.

What do you think of my acronyms? Are they truly needed? Which group, if any, do you fall under? Any suggestions?