Fight School Shootings By Arming Kids With Critical Thinking Skills

I've never met Alan Boraas, but whenever the Kenai Peninsula College professor has has a comment piece in the Anchorage Daily News, I know it's going to be well written and  cut right to the heart of the issue. 

In today's piece he did just that once again.  He starts right off by challenging most peoples' feel-good solution:

"If I thought banning assault weapons would help aver school killings, I'd be for it."

He goes on to say that Lanza (and others) could have done their deeds with conventional weapons.  He goes on to talk about a variety of things  - particularly "Call of Duty" video game.  How difficult it must have been for the unperfect Lanza to grow up in the perfect idyllic community. 

He ends by saying:

Banning guns or arming teachers won't do much.  But we can arm the curriculum with the power of analysis.  Teach how to deconstruct mythology that subconsciously effects behavior.  Bring to the surface the values embedded in movies, television, social media and video games.  Expose the message that the gun is not  the solution to problems, nor is the size of your pistol a measure of your manhood.
Arm kids with the knowledge that perfectville is not the only notion in a diverse world of possibilities.  Fight back with critical thinking.

Alan nails it.  


I'd link you to the article, but the ADN has begun to block their website unless you sign up.  I got a letter recently saying as a subscriber I could get in.  But the popup window they are using is one of the most annoying and impenetrable ones I've seen. I can't shut it down.  And they don't have a choice for me to say I'm a regular paper subscriber.  And their answer machine, after saying they are getting a heavier call load than normal and the wait will be long (I wonder why?), then says they are closed and not taking calls.  This is not the best way to initiate online registration.  More likely to send people to other sources of news.  

Peggy Shaw Took Me Inside Her Stroke

No one wants to go see a performance about a stroke, it sounds way too depressing.  But Peggy Shaw's bio already suggests she's not your run of the mill performer.  She's gotten three OBIE's* and several other impressive sounding awards, like a Lambda Literary Prize for Drama and Performer of the Year from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Theater.




[LAST SHOW:  Saturday, Dec. 23, 2012 - 8pm Out North]

This is a serious performer who invited the audience into her brain through her monologue, her virtual on the wall band that appeared and disappeared throughout.  She had three large monitors with her script - memorizing is hard for people who have had strokes - which she shared with the audience.  She talked, she sang, she danced, and she exposed her lapses along with her powerful personality as part of the show.

The photo was taken after the show. The show is dedicated to Ellen Stewart, La Mama, who never allowed green on stage because it was bad luck.  Peggy had her stroke right after Stewart died, and in this piece uses this huge roll of green paper which seemed to be a loud declaration of independence from Stewart, despite the clear admiration and love for her. 

Things went from normal music and video to sounds and visuals that probably simulated what the world is like to a stroke victim.  There was a great 60 second or so spot on how to know you're having a stroke.   There were floating fish.  Audience members were asked to hold onto things for Peggy until she needed them.

After the show

There was an intro that warned us of things that might happen - like she could start coughing, in which case to just hold on until her cough drops take effect.  What that did for me and I think the others there, was to include us as part of the insiders rather than just being an audience.  It was as though she were relating things to a friend rather than to an audience of strangers.

For people looking for drama with a plot line, this isn't it.  For people who find drama, as I do, in a heart-to-heart with someone who shares their near death experience and its aftermath, this is definitely worth attending.  And the show I saw Friday night was only the second time this piece has ever been performed before an audience.  The first time was a dress rehearsal Thursday night.  Shaw is still getting aligned with all the audio-visual aspects.  Though I was pretty impressed by how most of the time she was already synchornized with  the sound and video.

Out North consistently gives Anchorage audiences these incredible opportunities to be on the inside of contemporary international art and theater.  Here's this serious, award winning, very New York performer with helpers from Australia and Boston here as they spent ten days in Anchorage getting this performance piece ready to take to New York and London.  It's amazing what we have here.


The performance made me think of Anchorage's Peter Dunlap-Shohl, the cartoonist who has been communicating with the world about his Parkinson's through his medium - comics on his blog.  Like Peter's work, Peggy's uses art to experientially, and with humor, share her stroke experience with the world. For me the content was interesting as was the presentation. For someone with a close friend or relative who's had a stroke, this is the artist's, rather than the doctor's story of a stroke, that helps you understand a little of what is going on.  And it follows the stroke's story line, which includes lack of clear direction, even knowing where one is, not Hollywood's neatly packaged kind of story line.


The second video is mostly Shaw's co-writer, director talking after the show.  This is just a snippet.  She's talking about the moving images that had been on the green space that I had thought were brain scans.  It turns out they were the signals from an actor's body that are used in animation to get the character's body movements right.  Then she talks about the band.

*The Village Voice OBIE Awards were created soon after the inception of the publication in 1955 to publicly acknowledge and encourage the growing Off Broadway theater movement. The VOICE OBIES were purposely structured with informal categories, to recognize those persons and productions worthy of distinction each theater season. The OBIE Awards are an important part of the VOICE's long history of championing Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway productions. [From The Village Voice]

How Many Black Members in the 113th Congress?

The answer appears* to be 43 in the House, down from 44 in the 112th Congress.

The US Senate has one African American - Tim Scott, appointed to the position by South Carolina Governor Nicki Haley after Jim DeMint resigned in January 2013.  He's expected to run in the special election in 2014.  Shortly after Scott was appointed he was joined by African-American William "Mo" Cowan of Massachusetts who was appointed as Interim Senator to fill  John Kerry's seat when he became Secretary of State.  It was the first time ever there were two African-American US Senators at the same time.  Cowan did not seek election in June 2013 when Ed Markey was elected and took over Cowan's seat.  

[**UPDATE NOV 9, 2014:  After the midterm elections it now appears there will be 45 in the House of Representatives and 2 US Senators.  See the new list for the 114th Congress here.]

[**UPDATE OCTOBER 15, 2013:  African American Cory Booker is a candidate in the special election October 16, 2013 in New Jersey to replace Senator Frank Lautenberg who died  in January.  Booker is a Democrat in a heavily Democratic state running against Tea Party candidate Steve Lonegan.  One recent poll shows Lonegan gaining ground, but the Guardian sees it as wishful thinking by Republicans.  If Booker wins, he would become the second sitting Black US Senator and the only elected Black US Senator. (Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina was appointed.).]

[**UPDATE APRIL 14, 2013:  On March 18, 2013, William “Mo” Cowan (D-Mass.) was appointed to fill Senator John Kerry's seat when he resigned to become Secretary of State.  This is an interim appointment until the June 25 special election.  There are now two African Americans serving in the US Senate for the first time ever.] 


There will be 28[7] men and 15[6] women.  Two members - Eleanor Holmes of Washington DC and Donna M. Christensen of the Virgin Islands are non-voting members.

Six of the 112th's African American House members will not be returning for the 113rd Congress.  Three lost to white candidates after redistricting:

• California's Laura Richardson lost to another Democratic incumbent, Janice Hahn when their districts were merged.
• Florida's Republican Allen West lost to Democrat Patrick Murphy in a close race.
• Michigan's Hansen Clarke lost to another Democratic incumbent, Gary Peters, in the primary in their merged district.

Two were replaced by new African American candidates

• New Jersey's Donald M. Payne died.  His son Donald M. Payne Jr. replaced him.
• New York's Edolphus Towns retired and was replaced by Hakeem Jeffries.

One was reelected and then appointed to the US Senate.

• North [South] Carolina's Tim Scott

There were three new African American members elected from new districts:

• Texas' Marc Veassey. 
• Nevada's first African American member Steven Horsford.
• Ohio's Joyce Beatty.

[UPDATE APRIL 14, 2013:  Rep. Jesse Jackson resigned and was replaced on April 11, 2013 by Robin Kelly.  This doesn't change the number of black members of Congress, but it adds a woman.]

Tim Scott's House seat is now open, but, according to AP's Big Story site, it requires a special election.

With Tim Scott's move to the Senate, there will be no Black Republicans in the House and one in the US Senate.  [UPDATE April 14: two in the Senate with newly appointed Massachusetts Senator William 'Mo' Cowan.]


For details, below is a table I created to show each district, by states. (Alphabetical order by state abbreviations.) I've also included the percentage of the vote each member received in the November 2012 election. I've done this to help people see how districts have been gerrymandered to make these seats safe, as is the case for most districts. In some California districts,  both top candidates were Democrats. I've included % of minor candidates as well so the numbers should be very close to 100%.

You should be able to scroll it and enlarge it in the Scribd format below. 

Black Congress Members Dec. 2012 [Updated April 14, 2013]

This is a follow up to previous posts on this topic which I created when I found that there wasn't an easy way to get a list of Black members of Congress.

Feb. 4, 2008  How Many Black Members of Congress?  Original Post

Aug. 20, 2008  NPR Reports Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones Dies of Aneurism

Dec. 1, 2008  How Many Black Members of Congress:  Update

Dec. 16, 2008  How Many Black Members of Congress Update 

Nov. 4, 2010  How Many Blacks in Congress:  Post Election Update

Source of most election data:

2012 Congressional Election Results  District by district election results

Virgin Islands Results   These tended not to be part of most coverage.

Congressional Black Caucus Members

National Journal New Faces in 113th Congress - It seems I can only get you to the page with all the new members. There you can sort by "minorities" - which will show all the other new members with ethnic identities other than 'white'.  If you click on the individual  faces, you'll get a profile of that member. 


Information on districts where incumbents will not be in 113th:

Hansen Clark Race  On Michigan's 14th District Race

Edolphus Towns  replaced by Hakeem Jeffries

Donald M. Paine - On death of Paine Sr. and replacement by his son

Allen West race - On West's loss.

Tim Scott Senate appointment

Hakeem Jeffries  On Jeffries' replacement of Towns


New Districts:

Steven Horsford in Nevada's 4th District 

Joyce Beatty in Ohio's 3rd District

Marc Veassey in Teaxas' 33rd District



*Finding all the African-American Congress members is not easy.  That's why I posted my first post on this in 2008.  The Congressional Black Caucus website doesn't change it's list until after the new Congress begins.  I used that as the starting point for this list.  Then I checked the election of each of the current members.  But,  finding new members is harder.  I googled different possibilities which picked up Tim Scott, the Republican from South Carolina, did not join the Black Caucus.  When I thought I was done, I found the National Journal's list of the 113th Congress new members which allowed me to sort "Minorities" which yielded Horsford, Beatty, and Veassey.  I hadn't found them because they were from districts that were created after the 2020 Census.  So, I think this is reasonably complete, but if anyone finds someone missing or other errors, please let me know in the comments or  email me.

So, Will The World End Time Zone By Time Zone?

A hidden advantage of dividing the world into time zones, it seems, is that it's harder to destroy the world on any given day, because it becomes the next day at different times all over the world.

It's already December 21 in China.  And it appears that, at least in Anchorage, the world is still here. 

The way we divide time into hours and minutes and seconds and into time zones is a good example of social construction of reality.  It is based on physical reality - sunrise to sunset is roughly a day, the earth orbits the sun in roughly a year - but then humans went beyond 'natural' and designed systems that worked for them. We do that with everything that is human created. 

How we track time has always been dependent on technologies that could track the time better than watching the sun set and rise and where it is at noon.

It wasn't until the late 1800's that time zones were created, again, in response to technology - the telegraph and the railroad.  From Time and Date:

Trade, communications and transport became more globalized during the 19th century, which made it convenient that all maps and charts should indicate the same longitudes in whichever country they were produced, as being so many degrees east or west of a prime meridian. Moreover, the international telegraph needed at least a single standard to which all local times could be referred. 

American railroads maintained many different time zones during the late 1800s. Each train station set its own clock so it was difficult to coordinate train schedules. Time calculation became a serious problem for people traveling by train (sometimes hundreds of miles in a day), according to the Library of Congress. Every city in the United States used a different time standard so there were more than 300 local sun times to choose from. Railroad managers tried to address the problem by establishing 100 railroad time zones, but this was only a partial solution to the problem.

Operators of the new railroad lines needed a new time plan that would offer a uniform train schedule for departures and arrivals. Four standard time zones for the continental United States were introduced on November 18, 1883. Britain, which already adopted its own standard time system for England, Scotland, and Wales, helped gather international consensus for global time zones in 1884.

One could argue that since the people who are tracing the end of the world prediction to Mayans [and no one who knows anything about Mayan calendars seems to think they predicted the end of the world] it would make sense that if they had predicted the world's demise on Dec. 21, 2012, it would be on Dec. 21, 2012, Mayan time (Greenwich Mean Time -6).

I did try to figure out if there is a time when the whole world is the same day.  Wikianswers says:

Yes, everyday when it is point midnight on the International Dateline and midday on the Greenwich line (in London)

So, is this saying that for an instant, as the day changes at the international dateline, we are all the same day?  If that's the case, it would be the instant before the Asian side of the line changes to Dec. 22.

But if you look at a map of time zones - near the dateline - you see strange things.  First, as you cross the Date Line, you have to add 24 hours.  But as you scroll down the map, you'll see strange local time zones.  Tonga is GMT 13 and Tokalau is GMT 14, and American Samoa is GMT 15.  So there are places with extra time zones that wouldn't be on the right day.  I think.  It's all very confusing. 

Screenshot from Wikipeidia's Time Zone Map

It seems the only people who think the world might end on Dec. 21 are those who are (and these are not mutually exclusive categories) the uneducated, the easily persuaded, the people looking for any excuse to party, and the Republicans in the House who see no reason to back down on the "Fiscal Cliff" showdown,  because the world will end before January 1, 2013.  First they denied global warming, then they were certain Romney would win, then there's their denial of the connection between our gun policies and firearm deaths, so why shouldn't they believe twisted interpretations of the Mayan calendar? 

Maybe I'm being too hard on Republicans.  After all, even Fox News cites experts who say it ain't so.  But then, if it were arguing the world would end Dec. 21, how could they sell advertising spots for next week and beyond?

:)

Goodbye to Ravi Shankar and Daniel Inouye

There are two classical concerts I can think of that transported me into another world.  Two memorable times when I was transformed from my auditorium seat and disappeared into the music.  One was the year I was a student in Germany.  I was at a concert in a beautiful new auditorium in Florence and David Oistrack played magic on the violin.  The concert ended.  The audience mostly left but there were maybe 15 or 20 other people who must have been inside the music with me who continued to stand in the place and applaud in the now mostly empty auditorium.  And Oistrahk walked back onto the stage and played an encore for this small group.  It was amazing.

A few years later, in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer, I learned that Ravi Shankar was giving a concert in one of the hotel ballrooms in Bangkok.  Despite the uncomfortable folding chairs, the sitar strains entered into my body and took me to another world.

Probably my first introduction to Shankar was watching Sanjit Ray's Apu trilogy with my father, though at the time I wasn't aware of who he was or that it was his music in the films.   I became aware of Shankar, as a name and muscian. along with much of the Western world, through George Harrison. I had missed his concert at the Monterrey Pop Music festival, so I made sure I got into this Bangkok concert while I had the chance.  Another magical evening.  Here's some video of Shankar the same year I saw him.

From NY Times Obituary of Inouye

I never was, to my knowledge, in the same room as Daniel Inouye, but I remember 'meeting' him through radio and television when he was a member of the Senate Watergate Committee.  The whole committee was impressive - both Republicans and Democrats took their jobs seriously.  While the Republicans challenged any unsubstantiated comments or charges against Richard Nixon, they didn't deny the truth that was unraveling in the hearings.  They didn't attack their Democratic colleagues or raise red herrings to distract from the focus on the White House and its role in the Watergate break-ins.

 As a young graduate student studying public administration with the summer off, I was mesmerized by the hearings.  I was taken, along with the rest of the nation, deep into the workings of government in a way my classes couldn't match.  And I was watching a Senate committee that was working as it was supposed to - seriously, deliberately, and intelligently.  The committee - Republicans and Democrats - worked together closely to make sure justice was carried out.  We got to know each of the committee members and as a Californian whose knowledge of the South was coverage of the civil rights movement and the violent resistance to integration by many government officials, I discovered that there were indeed intelligent Southerners. 

Daniel Inouye was one of the most junior members, but he stood out as the only person of color on the committee.  He also was missing an arm from a war injury.   He impressed me and the nation with his sober questions and serious dedication to the unpleasant task.   His New York Times obituary says:

In 1973, as a member of the Senate Watergate committee, which investigated illegal activities in President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign, he won wide admiration for patient but persistent questioning of the former attorney general John N. Mitchell and the White House aides H. R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman and John Dean.

Screenshot of Watergate Committee from MacNeil -Lehrer News on Youtube

The Watergate Hearings are my touchstone against which I compare the Senate and the US House today. If you watched the Watergate Hearings, you understand that despite the political divisions, the Senators at least acted like gentlemen and dealt with facts, even unpleasant ones, with dignity. That's not to say that they didn't scheme behind the scenes. But the Republicans didn't balk and stall because their president was being investigated.  Today's Senators and House members should all have to watch the Watergate hearings and the impeachment hearings to see how they are supposed to act.

Squirrels and Obesity, Sleazy State Hire - Good Reporting From Kathleen McCoy and Shannyn Moore

I want to thank two other monitors of the local scene for their good work. Shannyn Moore and Kathleen McCoy have been doing pushing the local journalism's boundaries for a while now, but I want to point out two recent contributions.

Kathleen got seriously interested in new media (a year studying it at Stanford) before going from the Anchorage Daily News to the University of Alaska Anchorage.  She's now combining both those worlds with regular pieces in the ADN in a column called Hometown U about the many interesting things UAA faculty are doing.  That's something I thought that the University radio station should have been doing for a long time.

Kathleen's stories bring to life the science and teaching going on at UAA.  She is taking complex stories and presenting them in an interesting and informative way.  She is NOT dumbing down the science, but she is making it accessible.  Here are a couple of snippets from recent articles:

"Arctic ground squirrels are the Olympians of hibernation, opting to sleep through the harshest weather of the year (just the time we humans would prefer a trip to Hawaii).
In torpor, they perch on the very brink of life and death at temperatures that would freeze water and blood; even a small cut on a paw can endanger their careful balance and tip them toward death."

This goes on to discuss the National Institutes of Health research microbial ecologist Khrys Duddleston is doing at UAA.   The piece goes on to show how Duddleston is looking for a way to use the squirrels' survival technique to combat human obesity. 

Or this one about a UAA class:

"UAA tried out a new biology class this fall, called exploration ecology.
Think of it as education outside the box, in real-time.
The polar opposite of one professor standing in front of a giant survey class, handing out a dusty syllabus and saying, "Read chapter six and then do the labs." 

All semester long, biology professor Douglas Causey and his 12 students have been tromping through fields, counting invasive plants, chipping out stream ice to see what's swimming underneath and hanging recording devices to capture bat echolocation -- all in the Three Rivers area near Girdwood, home to Twentymile, Portage and Placer rivers."

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/12/01/2710327/hometown-u-uaa-students-work-in.html#storylink=cpy

 The rest is here.

Her articles show not just the science but something about the scientist as well and her personal connections to her research.  While some scientists would argue that's irrelevant, others think it's important to understand how scientists choose their subjects and make their breakthroughs:

"Jocelyn Krebs got the call every parent dreads. Her son was 19 months old when it came. She had "known for a while that something was up with him," she said. Rhys -- pronounced Reece -- is now 4 years old.
As a molecular biologist at UAA, Krebs studies exactly how a one-cell fertilized egg develops into an incredibly complex adult. She's intimately aware of all the ways this miracle can go awry."

This is good journalism because it's good writing on an important but often unseen part of the community - university faculty working quietly on their research and with their students doing significant things here in Anchorage that most of us wouldn't know anything about without Kathleen's stories.


The second person I want to salute is Shannyn Moore - local television, radio, newspaper, blogging dynamo proved the importance of journalistic oversight with an opinion piece a couple weeks ago about a particularly questionable state hire for a workers' comp hearing officer.

"So why did Gov. Sean Parnell recently go all the way to Pennsylvania to fill a vacant Hearing Officer position in the labor department (you know, the department that promotes Alaska hire)?
And what Pennsylvanian did we bend over backwards to hire?
The answer to the second question is: an ex-judge named Paul Pozonsky, who is apparently under investigation right now by a Pennsylvania grand jury for destroying evidence in 17 criminal cases, which led to his being stripped of the ability to hear cases, and who was the subject of a year-long "Protection From Abuse" order for domestic violence."

 According to Lisa Demer's ADN story on Dec. 14, this article had an impact:

After reading Moore's column, [Gov] Parnell became concerned that the hiring process was flawed, Leighow wrote in an email this week.

After Pozonsky resigned,  Shannyn kept on asking why and how he was hired in the first place and the state is investigating that too. 

Thanks Kathleen and Shannyn.  

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/12/01/2709454/shannyn-moore-how-does-a-pennsylvania.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/12/15/2725458/hometown-u-uaa-molecular-biologist.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/12/01/2710327/hometown-u-uaa-students-work-in.html#storylink=cpy

AIFF 2012: Friends of Film Head Bob Sharka Visits Festival

The first night of the Festival as I ran into a guy near the ticketing in just a polo shirt.  It was about zero outside and the chill was coming in through the doors.  Since I'm trying to spot the visiting film makers, I looked at him and with a smile asked, "You're from out of town right?"  He introduced himself as Bob Sharka from LA, from Friends of Film.

A few days later, after the film El Estudiante, I ran into him again and got a chance to find out what he was doing up here.  By the way, he was more appropriately dressed for cold weather too.



Did you hear how he completely avoided that last question? He clearly doesn't want to say anything bad about the local movies and he didn't miss a beat as he said so without actually saying it. A born salesman. I'm going to follow up with him when I visit my mom in LA to see first hand what the organization does. Here's a link to the Friends of Film website if you want to know more about them.

I thought I had something up on El Estudiante, a wonderful Mexican film about a seventy year old who returns to college that involves students putting on a play on Don Quixote and very positive old and young relationships. 

Anchorage Nearing Solstice

People frequently ask about the winter darkness in Anchorage.  The shortest (darkest) day of the year in the northern hemisphere is this Friday, December 21. We're actually more than a 500 mile drive south of the Arctic Circle.  And we have a fair amount of light, even on the shortest day. 

Yesterday the Anchorage Daily News said our official sunrise was 10:11am and the official sunset was at 3:40pm, but at this latitude we have very long twilights (if it's clear.)  The sun at noon is very low on the southern horizon at noon. 

Here's my shadow at 1pm today.   Time and Date says the solar noon yesterday was at 12:56 pm and the altitude of the sun was 5.6˚.
See table below for more details.

Here's the southern horizon at 4:45pm, over an hour after the official sunset time.

I remember being in Hawaii with our kids watching the sunset over the ocean and  warning them it would be dark in ten or 15 minutes and they were really amazed at that.

So, even though the official "total daylight" was listed in the paper yesterday as 5 hours and 26 minutes, we had more than an hour of twilight before sunrise and after sunset giving us seven hours and a half.  Of course, that's not true if it's cloudy in which case it gets dark very fast.

I love the soft velvety blue of the winter evening sky.  And even though it was around 0˚F yesterday, walking around in the clean, crisp air was totally invigorating.  (I didn't play with the colors of the photo, it's really that color. The trees a little off white due to the street light tint.) It is helpful to be properly dressed though. 

Here it is as background to this icy birch with the crescent moon caught in the branches.  It's about 5pm here.








Here's a post-sunset view of the Chugach mountains from Rasmuson Hall on the University of Alaska Anchorage campus.  Looking east here through the glass which caused the darker shadow on the upper left. 

The paper also says we lost 50 seconds of daylight Monday from Sunday.  For a while we were losing over 5 minutes a day, but we're slowing down as we get to the end of the earth's tilt and then we'll start to tilt back.  Soon we will be gaining time quickly again.


From Time And Date:

The December solstice occurs when the sun reaches its most southerly declination of -23.5 degrees. In other words, it is when the North Pole is tilted 23.5 degrees away from the sun. Depending on the Gregorian calendar, the December solstice occurs annually on a day between December 20 and December 23. On this date, all places above a latitude of 66.5 degrees north (Arctic Polar Circle) are now in darkness, while locations below a latitude of 66.5 degrees south (Antarctic Polar Circle) receive 24 hours of daylight.

Time and Date also calculates our sunrise and sunset schedule for this week a little bit differently from what the Anchorage Daily News has:

			Length of day		Solar noon
Date	Sunrise	Sunset	This day	Difference	Time	Altitude	Distance (106 km)
Dec 17, 2012	10:12 AM	3:41 PM	5h 28m57s	− 49s	12:56 PM	5.6°	147.204
Dec 18,	10:12 AM	3:41 PM	5h 28m19s	-37s	12:57PM	5.5˚	147.191
Dec. 19	10:13 AM	3:41PM	5h 27m54s	-25s	12:57 PM	5.5˚	147.179
Dec. 20	10:14AM	3:41PM	5h27m41s	-12s	12:58 PM	5.5˚	147.167
Dec. 21	10:14AM	3:42PM	5h27m40s	<1s	12:58 PM	5.5˚	147.157
Dec. 22	10:15AM	3:43PM	5h27m53s	+12s	12:59 PM	5.5˚	147.147
Dec. 23	10:15AM	3:43PM	5h28m17s	+24s	12:59 PM	5.5˚	147.137

HTML Tables

				Data from Time and Date.

Shootings In Context Part 2: What Can We Learn From The Last 61 Shootings?

One trait common to most humans is discomfort with uncertainty and ambiguity which is part of our need for closure.  The question 'why?' seems to be part of our DNA.  Some people channel this need into science.  Others into addictions - alcohol,  drugs, work, television, sports,  reading - anything that allows them to put off dealing with the uncertainties of life.  Others turn to religion to get answers to the unanswerable.  Probably most of us use a bit of all three.  Events like the school shooting in Newtown force us to attend to things that don't make sense to our normally routine worlds.  They force us to attend to the contradictions in our world views.  And we seek explanations that allow us to go back to normal.

I just made all that up.  It's probably not completely wrong, but I don't have anything but my experience and quirky brain to back it up.  Why am I telling you this?  Because I don't want you to do anything more than consider what I have to say.  I'm not writing  'the truth.'  I don't have any conclusions in this post.

I'm just trying to find some facts that are out there that can be used to test people's attempts to bring closure to a mass murder.  We shouldn't latch on to the first explanation that is most consistent with what we believe.  We should clean out our brain's dusty models of how the world works and see if they need some revisions.  We need to see why it's so easy to let go of the murder of 26 people and allow the conditions that allowed it to happen to incubate the next shooting.  It's not easy to let go?  Give it a few days.  How many of the last 61 mass shootings are still haunting you? 

That's the number in a Mother Jones piece I found.  Since 1982.  It maps them all out.  I went looking for numbers trying to find something that might give a clue to what we can do to stop the shootings.  In the previous post, I had found that mass shootings, dramatic as they may be, make up only a tiny fraction of the firearms deaths in the United States. But that post went in a different direction and so this post will share some of the numbers I had left over.

As I mentioned in the previous post on this topic, we can concentrate on figuring out the characteristics of mass murderers, then focus on finding people with those characteristics to stop them.  Or we can focus on those characteristics and figure out how to develop public health infrastructures that prevent the kinds of problems that mass shooters seem to have.  Focus on individuals or focus on what society does to encourage or discourage shooters.

Taking the list from Mother Jones, I made a long table which included the year, date, state, location (of the shooting), and the age of the shooter.  All that information and a little more is in the Mother Jones article, but I wanted to be able to sort it in different ways.

They specifically defined a mass murder as

• one shooter (though there are two exceptions which included two shooters)
• at least four dead, not including the shooter
• the number of dead can include the shooter 
• all but a couple were at one location, though there are a couple of 'sprees' in the list

[I  went back to their site, they've updated and done some of the sorting of numbers I was doing and present here.  I've done it a little differently.]

First I just start grouping the raw numbers.  I wanted to see if there are any things that stand out - such as most of the shooters are white males.  But even though this stands out, what do we do with it?  Even if all shooters were white males aged 37, would we screen all white males two weeks before their 37th birthday?  Not likely.

All the while I was thinking about correlations.  I didn't do anything complicated.  I'm just eyeballing the numbers - are there any relationships?  For instance, I checked the shooting dates against full moons.  There were three within a day of the full moon.  Sixty one shootings is  two months worth and we would expect about two to fall on a full moon. So that means nothing.

Gender and Race

I didn't do race because race wasn't always clear.  They have pictures for many, but you often can't tell race for sure by looking or by a name.   But people who study this say they are predominantly white males.  There was at least one black, a few Asians, and a couple who would appear to have been Hispanic.  Gender was pretty clear:  there was only one woman (white.)

Age

AGE	11-19	20-29	30-39	40-49	50-59	60-69	Total
Number	9*	15	12	20	6	1	63
*Two of the seven shootings in this age group had two shooters.

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The average age = 34.7 years
The modal (the number in the middle of the list) age = 36
The median (most frequent) age = 44 (5 were 44 years old)
If I had added in the Newtown shooting, there would also be 5 for the age of 20.

In the list of characteristics in Shootings in Context Part 1, it said most shooters were in their 20's or 30's.  But this list shows most to be in their 20's and 40's.  

Months

Is there some pattern for when they shoot?  Here's a table with how many shootings there have been per month.

Jan	Feb	Mar	April	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Dec
3	7	6	6	3	4	5	5	5	5	6*

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* Does not include Newtown school shooting

A pretty even distribution for such a low number.    I even looked to see if the full moon had any relationship to the shootings.  It didn't.


States

What about the states these events take place in? 

# of shootings	States (population density - people/square mile)	Total
0	Alabama (87), Alaska(1), Delaware(402), Idaho(15), Indiana(154), Kansas(33), Louisiana(103), Maine(41), Maryland(545), Montana (6), New Hampshire (138), New Jersey(1,144), New Mexico (15), North Dakota(9), Rhode Island (1014), South Dakota (10), Tennessee (138), Vermont (66), West Virginia (75), Wyoming(5) Washington DC (9370)	21
1	Arizona (45), Arkansas (51), Hawaii (186), Iowa (52), Michigan (175), Massachusetts (814), Mississippi (60), Missouri (81), Nebraska (22), Nevada (18), Ohio (277), Oklahoma (50), Oregon (35), Pennsylvania (274), South Carolina (135), Utah (27), Virginia (179)	17
2	Conn.(703),  Georgia (142), Illinois (223), Minnesota (61), Kentucky (102),	5
3	Colorado (41), New York (402), North Carolina (165), Wisconsin (99)	4
4	Washington (88)	1
5	Florida (298), Texas (79)	2
9	California (217)	1

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Here's a map I made that shows this graphically:


I'm not sure what this tells us.  30 states have had mass shootings, some more than once.  I was going to check population to see if that could account for California's high number of shootings.  The first chart I found was population density, so I stuck that in instead.  I thought maybe people in low density states might feel less stress or have more room to be alone.  All the states with 15 people per square mile or less are in the zero shooting category.

But the highest density states (New Jersey and Rhode Island) plus the District of Columbia (with the highest density) are also in the zero category.  Plus this is about mass shootings.   When I looked up firearm deaths per capita by state things changed quickly.

The four highest death by firearm states  (DC (31.2 deaths/100,000 population), Alaska (20),  Louisiana (19.5) and Wyoming (18.8), all had no mass shootings.  California (9.8) was 30th in deaths by firearm and high density states like New York (5.1) and Rhode Island (5.1)  tied at 46th and New Jersey (4.9) was 48th.

Looking for numbers I found this Atlantic Monthly article, The Geography of Gun Deaths, by Richard Florida, that does a lot of similar kinds of work on relationships between gun deaths in a state and other factors. (These are all gun deaths, of which mass shootings deaths are a small fraction.)  It concludes:

While the causes of individual acts of mass violence always differ, our analysis shows fatal gun violence is less likely to occur in richer states with more post-industrial knowledge economies, higher levels of college graduates, and tighter gun laws. Factors like drug use, stress levels, and mental illness are much less significant than might be assumed.

I'd say it's worthwhile to check out the whole article - it isn't that long, but full of interesting statistics.   It looks for a lot more correlations than I have and lists which ones are strong and which weak. 

They found no correlation (it only discusses correlation, not causation) between mental health and firearm deaths.  I put mental health as a major issue in the previous post.  But I was talking about mass killings and Florida (the author not the state) was looking at total firearm death statistics.  Mass shooting deaths are only a fraction of a percent of all annual firearm deaths so they wouldn't affect the statistics.

Location of Shooting

LOCATION	# OF SHOOTINGS
Gunman's workplace	25
School/University	11
Restaurant/Cafe	6
Mall/Shopping Center/Movie	5
Concert/Nightclub/Party	4
Social Services/City Hall	3
Place of Worship/Church	3
Wife's workplace	2
Other (train, spa)	2

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These numbers strongly support the triggering events mentioned in Part 1.

"triggering event may be a loss of job, being spurned by a woman, or something similar (usually an economic or academic crisis of some sort)."    

 36 of the 61 shootings were at their workplace or a school.  That says a lot.

While these shooters are clearly way outside the norm and many of them have conceptions of the world that don't come near matching reality, I do believe that many of them have been treated poorly by co-workers or fellow students and that treating others with respect - even when they are behaving strangely, even badly - would go a long way.  Even if it didn't stop these kinds of events, everyone else's lives would be much better. 


Are Things Getting Worse?

People have been asking if things are getting worse.  The chart shows that the 80's had the lowest number of shootings and deaths.  The 90s were the highest.  The 2000s dropped, but this may have been a post 9/11 effect (one shooting in 2001 and none in 2002).  The current teens would set a record if the rate continues. 

Year	# of Events	# Dead	Decade	# of Events	# Dead
1982	1	11	1982-89	7	153
1984	2	48
1986	1	21
1987	1	6
1988	1	11
1989	2	56
1990	1	42	1990-99	22	348
1991	3	61
1992	2	19
1993	4	56
1994	1	28
1995	1	6
1996	1	6
1997	2	14
1998	2	25
1999	5	91
2000	1	7	2000-2010	20	307
2001	1	9
2003	1	15
2004	1	12
2005	2	41
2006	3	28
2007	4	86
2008	3	42
2009	4	67
2010	1	11	2010-2012	10*	218*
2011	3	40
2012	6*	110*

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* Newtown school shooting not counted here

But given that there are over 30,000 firearm deaths a year, these numbers are almost incidental. 


So, I offer these numbers for reflection.  They don't tell us much, but they are probably more anchor than most people have when they talk about the shootings.

And do look at the Mark Follman piece in Mother Jones.  Then look at Richard Florida's Atlantic article.  He takes this much further than I do.  But remember, Flrida's looking at all firearm deaths, not just mass shootings. 

Here's what I've learned the past couple of days writing these two posts:

1.  We may or may not be able to stop these mass shootings.  It probably won't happen by trying to identify individuals likely to explode and stopping them.  Making it hard to get weapons might have an effect, but I'm not sure given how many weapons are already out there.  But making societal changes in general mental health care availability,  teaching people how to interact more respectfully, and preventing school and workplace bullying and harassment would probably, in the longer term, give future shooters less need to shoot.

2.  Probably more important is that the mass shootings are a highly visible, but a relatively insignificant part of the firearm death statistics.   Plain old murders and suicides and accidents with firearms kill 30,000 people a year.  That's where our efforts to stop firearm deaths should start.  The efforts there will, I'm guessing, also have an effect on mass shooters. 

Sufganyot And Other Hannukah Specialities

We were invited to a last night of Hannukah party and since it was less than a mile away we walked over about 5:15pm, just in time to see the last of the pale blue western sky fade and the beautiful crescent moon in the cold crystal clear air. (It's about 0˚F  or  -17˚C) Batches and batches of latkes were being pulled out to be heated as guests arrived (I think she said they'd made 3 or 400, 15 pounds of potatoes.)



Then placed on the table with apple sauce and sour cream.

The dessert table had sufganyot.  (It's ok, I had to ask what they were called too.) These are jelly donuts.  The Houston Chronicle has a recent article about them, including two recipes.  In part it says:

"Kuchenmeisterei" ("Mastery of the Kitchen"), published in 1485 and later translated into Polish as "Kuchmistrzostwo," has the distinction of being one of the first cookbooks to be run off Johannes Gutenberg's printing press. It also contains the first record of a jelly doughnut - "Gefullte Krapfen" - according to "Encyclopedia of Jewish Food" by Gil Marks.

Germans had many names for them, including Berliners. In Austria, they were known as krapfen. In Poland, they were called paczki. In Russia, ponchiki.

"In Israel, however, ponchiks soon took the name sufganiyah (sufganiyot plural), from a 'spongy dough' mentioned in the Talmud, sofgan and sfogga," Marks writes. "Sufganiyot subsequently emerged as by far the most popular Israeli Hanukkah food."

There were also other sweets and people brought lots of the things to taste.  

And when there were enough people there that latke supply had dwindled, they  said the prayers and lit the candles.  Since it was the last night, all the candles were lit.