It appears humans really are all the same

There's an old saying:

If it bleeds, it leads.

According to the internet (and specifically this site), that phrase was first used in an article in the New York Magazine in 1989. I guess it's not really that old then, but it sure feels that way.

It happens that I don't get the New York Magazine. It also happens that I only get one dead tree edition of anything, and that's Science News, a publication where that journalistic philosophy doesn't apply.

But I do read the news online, using Google News as my aggregator. When we moved to Vancouver I adjusted my feed. Google News tracks what you read and click on to build things, but it also lets you pick places you are interested in, and I am pretty sure it also taps your physical location as well.

The current political situation in the US is such a disaster that I can't stop clicking on articles about the latest idiocy committed by the orange menace and his rabid followers, so my feed still has a lot of US based news in it. With luck that will drop over time, possibly because of an impeachment. If that happens, the feed should naturally shift towards more Canadian news.

However, tying this post back to the introduction, Canada suffers from "If it bleeds, it leads" syndrome just as much as the US does. There is a difference, though: Canada has a lot less violence overall, and only about 10% of the population of the US. As a result, the news media here has to go farther afield to find blood, but they do it.

Every morning in the local sections about Vancouver and Richmond, I scan headlines about bodies found, gun shots, accidents, and so on. These are local news sources, and there probably isn't that much local news every day, so they fill their pages with whatever they can get. Blood first, though.

Sadly the national news does the same thing. I read about violence in Victoria, murders in Manitoba, and serial killers in Saskatoon. (Yes, some - ok, a lot of - liberties were taken with the truth in that sentence, but I like it.)

It's actually rather depressing, but reality is a bit different from what you might think (and in particular from what the idiotic minion in charge of the US Justice Department wants you to believe):

• In 2015, the murder rate in the US was 4.88 per 100,000 people. Wikipedia puts that at 94 out of 219 countries. There are 93 countries with higher murder rates.
• In 2014, the murder rate in Canada as 1.68 per 100,000 people, and the same article puts that at position 158 out of 219.
• Due to the population difference, the actual numbers are starkly different: there were 15,696 murders in the US in 2015, and 604 in Canada in 2014.
• Violent crime rates in the US - and, indeed, just about all crime there - have been steadily declining for 20+ years now.
• Similarly, crime rates in Canada are mostly dropping as well.

Despite all of that - actual information! - people in both the US and Canada believe they are always in danger, and worry about highly unlikely events for no reason at all. And in both countries it plays into the hands of politicians wanting power to exaggerate those fears.

I'm tired of that.

In the US the deluge of crime and bad news - due simply to population size - means that if you live in Florida you probably don't read about murders in Oregon unless something really awful happened. And in big cities you don't read about every murder that happens just for lack of space in publications to document them. (Again that is due to population size, not overall crime rates.) So while"if it bleeds, it leads" is still true, there is other news on the front page, at least some of the time.

Here in Canada, though, we read about every murder, shooting, major accidents, and so on all over the country. The simple act of listing them all out in headlines can make you think that crime and death are rampant. It's actually a bit depressing.

I'm trying to figure out how to deal with this. I mean, the political headlines from the US are depressing enough, but add in the major crimes in cities 3000 miles away, and suddenly the news is just an awful read. I don't have any answers yet, but I am open to suggestions.

And yes, it really is safe here. It's lovely, and safe. Just avoid the news.

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Note: This is a secret post. That is, I am not emailing an announcement about this one because I've written a lot of posts lately, and sent email about them. I don't want to drive people getting those emails nuts. This will get announced on FB, and on G+. And I need to think about twitter too, I guess... hmmm. But I won't email the announcement list. If you find this post you are thus a member of a very select club. Congratulations. Being a member gets you absolutely nothing, but you're in. Yay! You can join the club by getting in touch - email, DM on FB, telegram, phone call(!), whatever - and giving me an email address where you'd like to receive notices of new posts. Once school starts I'll almost certainly post less often, so you shouldn't get flooded with email. Thanks!

Thoughts on Charlottesville

Two brief notes before I get to the gist of this post:

1. Some readers of this blog know me from a large mailing list where I was a moderator. In that role, I kept my political leanings and most other opinions to myself. In this blog, I don't do that. If that bothers you, feel free to skip those posts or stop reading entirely, but I am not going to limit my posts here based on the restrictions I faced in another - completely different - forum.
2. The content of this post was first published on Facebook. I've revised it slightly for the blog format, but the basic ideas are the same.

And with that:

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I am going to be a bit harsh here, but it is deserved, so...

I am appalled at the idiocy that went on in Charlottesville. Nazis have no place in America - or the world - and a president that supports them - even implicitly - has no place in the oval office. If you support the so-called "Alt Right" or the "New Right" (or any other variant on that lunacy) you're a Nazi, and I want nothing to do with you. There is no place for that in our society. World War II was supposed to have settled that.

Also, the south lost the civil war. It's over. Stop flying that horrible flag and move on. All humans deserve respect and dignity. If you can't do that, get lost.

It's sad that we've come to the point where making statements like that is necessary, but I have too many friends of different backgrounds, skin colors, and immigration statuses to be silent about this.

What happened in Charlottesville cannot happen again.

The NSA Is Reading My Email

This isn't paranoia on my part.

As some of my readers here know, I am a sculptor. I carve stone. In addition I repair sculptures in some cases. I don't work on really expensive stuff, or anything by noted artists, or anything valuable by virtue of age - I don't have formal, conservator training - but that doesn't stop people from emailing me and asking for those kinds of repairs, or asking questions about how to get such repairs made by someone else.

And I've had questions from a fair number of places... much of the US, Australia, and England, at least.

But two days ago I got one from Pakistan. A very nicely spoken (well... written) gentleman there has a couple of very old, broken, Buddha sculptures, and he was looking for some advice on how to fix them. I replied and told him what I could, as I do with everyone who asks such questions of me. (The gist of my advice, of course, was to find a conservator. 2000+ year old sculptures need to be repaired by an expert.)

This morning he sent me a picture of one from his collection that is unbroken. I don't feel like I should publish it here - I haven't asked for permission - but it is lovely. He also asked for advice on how to safely display his sculptures with less risk of additional breakage.

And once again I replied, discussing the issues around displaying them, and telling him about museum putty.

This is all completely innocent, of course. Or is it?

I've now exchanged multiple emails with someone in Pakistan, and that someone has also sent me a picture.

Wanna bet I am on the NSA's radar now? And probably their equivalents in at least the 5 eyes countries? You know I am.

If my emails weren't being monitored and saved before, they definitely are now.

And I had to think about whether I would reply to these emails or not. I actually sat at my desk for a couple of minutes wondering if it was worth the risk - of getting tagged by the NSA as communicating with someone in Pakistan, someone I don't even know personally - to discuss sculpture repair. That's appalling.

Imagine what this could have looked like. What if we'd talked about something more delicate, like the state of politics in his home city, or religion.  Ponder that for a bit.

The direction the US has taken is a dangerous one. Each day we look more and more like the dictatorships we claim to oppose, and it happens one tiny little step at a time. One little freedom given away in the name of "security". One little act of self censorship because someone might be watching.

I'm sure this blog post will only cause the NSA to watch me that much more closely. And possibly other agencies as well... FBI, CIA, who knows. And apparently various presidential directives and secret interpretations of certain laws make that all completely legal.

It makes me sick to my stomach.

Something Controversial

If you're going to get offended and yell at me, stop reading now. Really.

No, really. Just find another corner of the net and ignore me if you're easily offended, because I am about to write something that will definitely offend a large chunk of the population of the US. At least.

Our alarm clock goes off every morning and gives us the latest news from our local NPR station. And every morning I regret the fact that it isn't tuned to an all polka station, or, in fact, anything but news.

There is something awful about waking up to the latest shooting. Every morning. If it isn't here in the US - which it usually is - then it's overseas.

And yes, I know that as a whole the planet is getting less violent and people are living longer, but that doesn't address the issue as I see it, so I am just going to come right out and say it:

Guns should not be a part of any civilized society.

It's really that simple. You want to hunt? Fine. Do it with a bow and arrow.

No one should have to own a gun. No one.

I am sick of hearing and reading about shootings: today's is in the Washington Navy Shipyard, a day or two ago it was police shooting someone who was probably asking for help after wrecking his car, drive bys, collateral damage, feuds between former friends or lovers, total strangers shot by bored kids for no reason. And the list goes on. It's practically endless. I'm not going to give you links because I don't even want to see the stories. You can find them yourself, far too easily.

It's pathetic. Guns are not the answer. Guns are never the answer.

To be honest, I have no idea how to get rid of the damn things. They are a huge business, and a slew of testosterone crazed males seem to depend on them for their personal sense of identity, or something. And as a country we idolize the stupid things, practically worshipping them as gods.

We are sick with them.

But guns do not make you a man. And as far as I can tell, in most cases they do not make you safer. Of course, we have congress and the NRA carefully working to prevent research into actual gun safety, so no one can be certain of anything. Because guns are so great and all that we have to protect ourselves from actual data about them.

No. They are not great. Anything whose sole purpose is to kill another person is not great, and never will be.