Posts
Winter solstice is darker and more desperate this year...
The phrase, prayers to broken stones, comes from the title of a fine and sad anthology of fiction and horror by Dan Simmons.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Prayers to Broken Stones
The phrase, prayers to broken stones, comes from the title of a fine and sad anthology of fiction and horror by Dan Simmons.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Oh, Is That All?
I'm sorry, but a team of commandos in every school is not going to be one of the answers...
As a nation we are all reeling from the horror of Sandy Hook. Even before we understand precisely what happened and why, we are flailing around for the means to reduce our fear of future attacks. A company called Chameleon Associates posted an article titled, Countermeasures against School Shootings. Some of their ten countermeasures are thought-provoking and bear further consideration, but number eight is typical of a very popular notion we've been hearing since last Friday.
Oh, is that all? Most cops aren’t trained to this level; just ask the nine wounded bystanders at the Empire State Building shooting this year. I wonder what recruiting, screening, selecting, training, equipping, insuring, maintaining, providing time off, and supervising a person at this level would cost each year. How many of these shooters does Chameleon Associates recommend per school to provide sufficient counter-force for one attacker? How many for two? On these details they are silent.
Posting heavily armed and armored Navy SEALS in every school in America is certainly a comforting fantasy as we recover from the horror of Sandy Hook, but at some point we'll have to reclaim all our senses and find solutions we can sustain in the real world.
As a nation we are all reeling from the horror of Sandy Hook. Even before we understand precisely what happened and why, we are flailing around for the means to reduce our fear of future attacks. A company called Chameleon Associates posted an article titled, Countermeasures against School Shootings. Some of their ten countermeasures are thought-provoking and bear further consideration, but number eight is typical of a very popular notion we've been hearing since last Friday.
“Have armed response capabilities – Having an armed security guard on premises does not mean you have “armed response capabilities”. Most armed guards are neither trained nor experienced with tactical response to an active shooter scenario. The armed security guards must be trained in: instinctive shooting, when-to-shoot scenarios, when to stop shooting or chasing, shooting through a face-forward crowd, hand-to-hand combat, aggressiveness training and more. The shooting technique for the guard must be based on an instinctive reaction where he does not need to think, only react and attack the shooter fully neutralizing him as soon as possible. He should not call for backups (someone else will.) He should not take cover (this allows the shooter to be in control.) He should not stop to treat or evacuate the wounded (someone else will.) The guard must know how to shoot while moving fast, forcing the adversary to defend himself. This type of shooting and response requires A LOT of training to the point where the guard’s response is completely instinctive.”
Oh, is that all? Most cops aren’t trained to this level; just ask the nine wounded bystanders at the Empire State Building shooting this year. I wonder what recruiting, screening, selecting, training, equipping, insuring, maintaining, providing time off, and supervising a person at this level would cost each year. How many of these shooters does Chameleon Associates recommend per school to provide sufficient counter-force for one attacker? How many for two? On these details they are silent.
Posting heavily armed and armored Navy SEALS in every school in America is certainly a comforting fantasy as we recover from the horror of Sandy Hook, but at some point we'll have to reclaim all our senses and find solutions we can sustain in the real world.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Not The Time For Numbers
The statistics that tell us mass murder and school shootings are rare offer very little comfort this weekend...
Along with the rest of our nation I'm numbed by the unspeakable tragedy that devastated the community of Newtown, Connecticut, Friday morning. For now we'll mourn for murdered children and grieve with their families. We'll take great pride and small comfort in the knowledge that several adults at the school died rushing the gunman in an unsuccessful attempt to stop him with their bare hands. In time we'll learn more about the nature of the shooter's brutal derangement; knowledge that will come much too late for the 26 victims, their families, and their community.
Already there are pleas for more gun control - and less gun control - from each end of that debate. Some plead for another assault weapons ban, while others ask that teachers and other adults be allowed to carry concealed handguns in school. Ironically, while they go about it in different ways, people on either side of this culture war issue seek to create a sense of safety and control in the face of fear and uncertainty.
While this debate is likely to rage on for some time, there is one idea upon which I hope all parties can agree and then do something about today:
This is not a blanket indictment of the mentally ill. Most mentally ill persons are at greater risk of being the victim of a crime than they are to commit one. However, while very few persons with mental health problems or personality disorders commit mass murder, almost all persons who commit mass murder (other than criminal massacres, go figure) have a serious mental illness or suffer from a dangerous personality disorder.
Under federal regulation and state laws persons with serious mental health or drug abuse issues are not allowed to purchase firearms. Persons named in protective orders are not allowed to buy guns and they are also supposed to surrender any they possess. These details are supposed to be verified before a firearm purchase is permitted, but dangerous people can and do defeat these safeguards. Regrettably, the madmen who killed 32 at Virginia Tech, six in the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords, and 12 in Aurora, Colorado bought their weapons while they could still color inside the lines.
Preliminary reports tell us the three guns used by the shooter in Newtown belonged to his mother and that he used one to kill her before leaving their home. It's not my place to question her decision to own firearms, but I question her judgment in allowing her disturbed son access to them. She would too, if she were still alive. The rifle used to kill two and wound another at the Clackamas Town Center Mall was stolen from its owner by the shooter. The AR-15 is a lawful implement with a variety of legitimate applications, but I question the owner's storage precautions. I imagine he will too, for the rest of his life. How might our world be different today if the guns used to commit these recent horrors had been locked away behind the armored door of a gun safe?
What about you, your family, and your friends? Do you own firearms? Do you know anyone who does? What have you done to prevent these powerful tools from falling into the wrong hands and being used to perpetrate evil? Do you have a sturdy safe in which to protect your guns from theft, misuse, and tragedy? If you keep a pistol for personal defense do you store it in a lock box only you can open? If you're an anti-gunner, instead of arguing with your gun-owning friends and relatives about the need for new gun laws, how about convincing them to buy a gun safe instead? If you're a fervent proponent of the right to keep and bear arms, instead of rushing out to buy another assault rifle before the next gun ban, how about using the money to buy a safe large enough to secure all the guns you already own? Think on it. It's something every one of us can do without giving up an inch from our respective positions on the gun rights issue.
Along with the rest of our nation I'm numbed by the unspeakable tragedy that devastated the community of Newtown, Connecticut, Friday morning. For now we'll mourn for murdered children and grieve with their families. We'll take great pride and small comfort in the knowledge that several adults at the school died rushing the gunman in an unsuccessful attempt to stop him with their bare hands. In time we'll learn more about the nature of the shooter's brutal derangement; knowledge that will come much too late for the 26 victims, their families, and their community.
Already there are pleas for more gun control - and less gun control - from each end of that debate. Some plead for another assault weapons ban, while others ask that teachers and other adults be allowed to carry concealed handguns in school. Ironically, while they go about it in different ways, people on either side of this culture war issue seek to create a sense of safety and control in the face of fear and uncertainty.
While this debate is likely to rage on for some time, there is one idea upon which I hope all parties can agree and then do something about today:
Persons suffering from psychotic delusions or personality disorders that make them a danger to themselves or others should not have access to firearms.
This is not a blanket indictment of the mentally ill. Most mentally ill persons are at greater risk of being the victim of a crime than they are to commit one. However, while very few persons with mental health problems or personality disorders commit mass murder, almost all persons who commit mass murder (other than criminal massacres, go figure) have a serious mental illness or suffer from a dangerous personality disorder.
Under federal regulation and state laws persons with serious mental health or drug abuse issues are not allowed to purchase firearms. Persons named in protective orders are not allowed to buy guns and they are also supposed to surrender any they possess. These details are supposed to be verified before a firearm purchase is permitted, but dangerous people can and do defeat these safeguards. Regrettably, the madmen who killed 32 at Virginia Tech, six in the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords, and 12 in Aurora, Colorado bought their weapons while they could still color inside the lines.
Preliminary reports tell us the three guns used by the shooter in Newtown belonged to his mother and that he used one to kill her before leaving their home. It's not my place to question her decision to own firearms, but I question her judgment in allowing her disturbed son access to them. She would too, if she were still alive. The rifle used to kill two and wound another at the Clackamas Town Center Mall was stolen from its owner by the shooter. The AR-15 is a lawful implement with a variety of legitimate applications, but I question the owner's storage precautions. I imagine he will too, for the rest of his life. How might our world be different today if the guns used to commit these recent horrors had been locked away behind the armored door of a gun safe?
What about you, your family, and your friends? Do you own firearms? Do you know anyone who does? What have you done to prevent these powerful tools from falling into the wrong hands and being used to perpetrate evil? Do you have a sturdy safe in which to protect your guns from theft, misuse, and tragedy? If you keep a pistol for personal defense do you store it in a lock box only you can open? If you're an anti-gunner, instead of arguing with your gun-owning friends and relatives about the need for new gun laws, how about convincing them to buy a gun safe instead? If you're a fervent proponent of the right to keep and bear arms, instead of rushing out to buy another assault rifle before the next gun ban, how about using the money to buy a safe large enough to secure all the guns you already own? Think on it. It's something every one of us can do without giving up an inch from our respective positions on the gun rights issue.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Overrated?
Or decontextualized?
There I was trying to decide between Schneier's Liars and Outliers or Bultmann's Kerygma and Myth for some late night bedtime reading when I defaulted to NetFlix.
I watched Battleship Potempkin for the first time. The scene on the Odessa steps was pretty powerful - nothing says czarist repression like jackboots, bayonets, and live ammo crowd control, but otherwise it was not even remotely so awesome as its reputation led me to believe. Subtlety was certainly not a option on Eisenstein's palette, but The Ebert tells us that was a deliberate element of his method. Maybe you had to be there, or maybe it needs to be the first movie you ever saw, or maybe it would rouse you to action if you were actually a member of the proletariat? I'm probably just некультурный.
I know, I know; I should have gone with the Bultmann...
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
The Atheist Is Probably Right
But Homo Religiosus has all the fun...
Me, I find indulging my agnosticism - by way of a deep interest in the history and philosophy of religion - more interesting that being an angry anti-theist. In that pursuit I am indebted to historians, philosophers, psychologists, and theologians of the 20th century. Useful guides in this territory have included Tillich, Otto, James, Jung, Campbell, and several times now, Eliade.
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion is the most accessible of the several books by Mircea Eliade that I've read. History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, was pretty dense. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy was a bit of a slog. Were you to read only one book by Eliade The Sacred and the Profane is the one I'd recommend, at least until I've read more of him.
Unlike the Angries who think religion should be simply and finally dispensed with by modern societies, Eliade (and the others) explain that some sort of religion is all but inevitable. The religious impulse is hard-wired into how we perceive the world and interact with each other. We've likely had religion for as long as we've had speech, music, and art; it may even spring from same nexus of traits that made us finally fully human. What humanity has done with - and proposes to do with - this drive is as significant today as it was 2,000 or 20,000 years ago. Religion is not going away, if anything the most dangerous sorts of it are resurgent. Understanding religion and sort of certainty that leads to life-changing (or life-ending) dogma, doctrine, and action is more important than ever.
If the study of religion is your thing you've probably already read The Sacred and the Profane, but if you haven't, you should.
Me, I find indulging my agnosticism - by way of a deep interest in the history and philosophy of religion - more interesting that being an angry anti-theist. In that pursuit I am indebted to historians, philosophers, psychologists, and theologians of the 20th century. Useful guides in this territory have included Tillich, Otto, James, Jung, Campbell, and several times now, Eliade.
The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion is the most accessible of the several books by Mircea Eliade that I've read. History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, was pretty dense. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy was a bit of a slog. Were you to read only one book by Eliade The Sacred and the Profane is the one I'd recommend, at least until I've read more of him.
Unlike the Angries who think religion should be simply and finally dispensed with by modern societies, Eliade (and the others) explain that some sort of religion is all but inevitable. The religious impulse is hard-wired into how we perceive the world and interact with each other. We've likely had religion for as long as we've had speech, music, and art; it may even spring from same nexus of traits that made us finally fully human. What humanity has done with - and proposes to do with - this drive is as significant today as it was 2,000 or 20,000 years ago. Religion is not going away, if anything the most dangerous sorts of it are resurgent. Understanding religion and sort of certainty that leads to life-changing (or life-ending) dogma, doctrine, and action is more important than ever.
If the study of religion is your thing you've probably already read The Sacred and the Profane, but if you haven't, you should.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)