Re: Opium [was: Re: freelance sysadmining -- superlong -- [WAS: "Red Hat recommends Windows for consumers"]]
On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 05:01, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-11-15 at 05:08, cr wrote:
> > On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 15:06, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 15:41, ScruLoose wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 02:09:27PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 12:41, donw@examen.com wrote:
> > > > > > On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 01:35:20PM -0500, Alfredo Valles wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > > > Does it take "multiple Columbines on a daily basis" to constitute a
> > > > problem?
> > > > Somewhere close to a hundred Americans blow each other away _per_day_
> > > > and you want this to lead me to the conclusion that things are okay?
> > >
> > > And...
> > > - most are done with hot weapons
> > > - most are "criminal-on-criminal"
> > >
> > > I'd rather not live in a nanny state, and take my chance, however
> > > minimal they are, in a slightly more anarchic society.
> >
> > That's kinda a risky argument to rely on, since if accepted it inevitably
> > leads to the question - why does the US have ten times as many homicidal
> > criminals per capita, than other countries? Answers in the back of an
> > envelope please, addressed to the Director-General, FBI, Washington (I
> > guess he'd dearly like to know...) <vbeg>
>
> You think the (main) reasons why the US has become a relatively
> violent society over the past 45 years would fit on the back of an
> envelope? Well, lets see what's on the top of my head:
> - breakdown of the family
> - divorce/abandonment
> - fear by modern parents of damaging children's self-esteem
> - parents wanting to be "friends"
> - federal regs that make it financially more attractive for the
> father to leave.
> - excessive amounts of TV
> - breakdown of public morality
> - libertine-ism instead of liberty
> - for *example*, the HBOization of broadcast TV
> - ties in with "breakdown of the family"
> - growth in use of illegal drugs, in past ~40 years
> - ties into "breakdown of the family" and "breakdown of public
> morality"
While I agree about the trashiness of most modern TV, not least in its
trivial reporting of 'news' events, surely all these factors exist in other
countries too?
But anyway, this is all way OT in this list, and I don't know the magic
ingredient, so I think I'll leave it there.
cr
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