Sunday, December 31, 2023
Childhood Memories
Tuesday, December 26, 2023
Het Meisje
Friday, December 22, 2023
Friday, December 15, 2023
Variations in Rates of Homicide and Gun Ownership
As every time, the mass murder is followed by hand-wringing and endless questions about the perpetrator’s motives and mental condition. We hear, again and again, that the cause of our mass murder epidemic is mental illness, that the solution is to identify those who are dangerously mentally ill and to prevent them from acquiring fire arms. This is nonsense, of course. The rate of mental illness is not higher in the US than elsewhere. I have always argued for one simple point: It’s all about the guns. The more guns there are, the more people die from guns. Period.
But I have yet to come across data documenting the simple proposition that there is a strong correlation between a place’s homicide rate and its rate of gun ownership. Logic is on my side, but what about data?
Last year, I tried to test this hypothesis myself. I used countries as my units of analysis. My results were inconclusive. They did not show that countries with high rates of gun ownership also had higher homicide rates.
I just repeated my effort. But instead of comparing countries, I now compared the fifty US states. My source is States’ gun ownership rates.
I entered the data into a two-by-two table with the following four categories:
2. States with low homicide rates and high gun rates
3. States with high homicide rates and low gun ownership
rates
4. States with low homicide rates and low gun ownership
rates
Saturday, December 9, 2023
My Return to the True Faith
Like most children, I believed in Santa while I was growing up. How could I not? He was a sweet, jovial, warm kind of fellow and I always wondered what would happen if I would catch him in the act of coming down the chimney. Would he wink at me, say ‘ho, ho, ho’, put lots and lots of presents under the tree and climb back up on his way to another family’s chimney? Or would he get upset and do an about-face to teach me a lesson?
As Christmas approached I was always a much nicer person because I knew that Santa was paying close attention to what I was doing. In fact, closer to Christmas, every move I made was scrutinized by this little inner voice in my head that said: ‘What would Santa think of what you are doing?’
I don’t remember when exactly I lost the faith. Maybe it was after I saw my father sneak downstairs on Christmas Eve with lots of boxes in his arms. I didn’t observe any noticeable deterioration in my post-Santa existence, so he slowly slipped into the box marked ‘useless beliefs for the gullible me’, which I stored away in the recesses of my increasingly critical mind.
We still held on to the Christmas tradition, even after I discovered that the Santa I had believed in for so many years was the creation of a cartoonist by the name of Thomas Nast. This mere mortal had been commissioned to create the Santa character as a ploy to keep Union soldiers motivated in their grueling campaigns during the Civil War!
When we moved to a new town and a new house without a chimney, it was clear proof that being good around Christmas time was a waste of my time.
On a cold but sunny December afternoon, we went on our annual Christmas shopping bonanza. Perfectly trimmed Christmas trees were lining the wide and clean streets. There was not a chimney in sight. According to our map, downtown housed a celebrated statue marked as ‘Our Savior’. We approached it from the back, a gigantic construction, and we could see that it was primarily red in color. Soon we could distinguish its features and to our amazement, we recognized the familiar features: long white beard, red hat with a white pompon and the baggy red pants of none other than Santa! Read more...
Thursday, December 7, 2023
My Invisible Neighbor
I am lying on a gurney, waiting to be prepped for an abdominal exam. Dark green curtains hide the rest of this sterile hospital space. I am freezing. I wait, curled up like a cocoon inside some heated blankets that the nurse gave me. The vinyl floor reflects the harsh overhead light. I wait. I am a patiently waiting patient.
Suddenly, a loud voice pierces the air. A nurse slides the curtain open around the adjacent cubicle. With a heavy foreign accent, she begins the intake procedure. My neighbor slurs her speech, as if she just woke up. She sounds old.
Judging by the ensuing questions, she must be here for a colonoscopy.
‘When was the last time you drank, Maam?’ asks the nurse.
‘I drank a gallon of liquid. That was a week ago and nothing happened. I couldn’t move my bowels. They sent me home because it was the wrong day. So this time I did the prep and things started two days after the prep. Nothing but diarrhea'.
‘Oh, wow. But what time did you drink TODAY?
‘Before seven thirty in the morning.’
‘What time did you have anything to eat, like bread or anything’?
‘Nothing.’
The nurse coughs profusely. ‘I hope you are not sick’ says my neighbor.
‘No I am alergic to my cat. Do you have any pain?’
‘Oh yes’
‘Where?’
‘In my head, I have a headache. I fell and I have a headache. And in my belly. Especially when I have to move my bowels. It feels like I am going to burst, but nothing comes out. Maybe a little piece, maybe this size.’
More coughing: ‘Tell me about your teeth can you open your mouth for me?’
‘Very bad. I had some surgery done.’
‘Any loose teeth?
‘Nothing. I don’t have any up here. This one was pulled three months ago and now there are all kinds of growths inside my mouth.’
The questions keep coming. Some, she already answered. The nurse must have amnesia.
More questions. My neighbor starts to lose her patience. ‘Why don’t you look up my medical records, for Christ’s sake. Don’t you have a computer? Why all these questions? All I want is for someone to look up my ass!’
My neighbor now embarks on a lengthy monologue. Is she still talking to the nurse? But the nurse already left. Now, nothing can stop her. She tells the hospital air how she survived the Holocaust, how she had been a Flamenco dancer and had lived in Israel. She owned a cab company called ABC. She goes on telling nobody and everybody her entire life’s story. Probably all invented. Read more...