Rob Reid wrote a great explanation of the horrible risk taken during the Manhattan Project, when American nuclear scientists took a chance estimated at one-in-three million that the first atomic test would create a chain reaction that would ignite the…
Blog Archives
Good Guys with guns vs. Bad Guys with guns
Updated: 8/7/2019 I’m a pragmatic pacifist who wishes to minimize violence and I accept that some violence might be necessary to accomplish this. Of course, everyone says that they want to minimize violence, so how is a pacifist like me…
Posted in Violence & Peace
The irrationality of obsessing about gun violence
Once again, Vox Media gets the importance of gun violence all wrong. Brian Resneck says, “America’s teens are [right to be] extremely stressed out about school shootings”. No, no, no. Schools are extremely safe places and mass shooters are extremely…
Posted in Violence & Peace
Why are Americans suddenly more interested in gun control? Perhaps because of a 9/11-size spike in gun homicides.
Although I’m a pacifist (and a pragmatic one not a fundamentalist*), I don’t get particularly passionate about gun control because despite the fact that it generally reduces homicides and suicides, because other factors are even more important for reducing homicides. Furthermore,…
Posted in Violence & Peace
Vox’s misleading gun death graph
In the wake of the mass shooting tragedy in Los Vegas, Vox posted an analysis showing that more guns lead to more gun deaths: I was immediately suspicious because I’m living in Guatemala and I am constantly being reminded that…
Posted in Health, Violence & Peace
Mass-shooter drills train students to become future mass shooters.
mass shootings in schools are a form of epidemic and if the bug can be caught from exposure to press reports about mass shooters it can probably be caught from participation in mass shooter drills too.
Posted in Violence & Peace
Lions, tigers, bears, and deer. Oh My!
Earlier I wrote about the terrorism that is brutally killing 38,000 Americans this year in nightmarish fashion. I have now identified a group is responsible for 200 of these deaths and they are not even legal American citizens. What group sounds more lethal,…
Posted in Public Finance, Violence & Peace
Medianism 