More Sad Tragedy With Guns and Children

In East Brunswick, a fifth-grader shot a sixth-grader, perhaps by accident. The article quotes neighbors in disbelief.

They talked about how safe and family-friendly the neighborhood was and showed pictures of Alex, a blond, blue-eyed child, from his school yearbook. “There’s a million kids in this neighborhood, of all different races and ages, and we all live in harmony,” said Linda Lieberman, whose son was in Alex’s class.

Well, despite the apparent chilhood overpopulation — East Brunswick’s infrastructure surely can’t handle one million children living in the town — the overwhelming reaction is that this couldn’t happen in their neghborhood. One even claimed that all people regardless of race live in harmony in their community.

I don’t know if this is a “race” issue, as the article doesn’t identify the shooter, but at least one interviewer mentioned race. The much bigger issue is access to weapons. How did a kid get his hands on a handgun? Even that question is only part of the issue. Why does this kid, who possibly has exposure to weapons at home, not understand the real danger of playing with guns?

Bat Mitzvah

My Bar Mitzvah was nothing like Elizabeth’s Bat Mitzvah. While I didn’t have Steven Tyler in attendance to sing with the band, my mother lent her talents to the stage, and it’s quite possible she sang an Aerosmith tune.

Sweet Smell Of…

New York City smells…

… sweet, apparently. At least for some time yesterday. Here’s a clip of the article if it’s inaccessible:

An unseen, sweet-smelling cloud drifted through parts of Manhattan last night. Arturo Padilla walked through it and declared that it was awesome. […] Mr. Padilla was not alone. Reports of the syrupy cloud poured in from across Manhattan after 9 p.m. Some feared that it was something sinister.

There were so many calls that the city’s Office of Emergency Management coordinated efforts with the Police and Fire Departments, the Coast Guard and the City Department of Environmental Protection to look into it.

By 11 p. m., the search had turned up nothing harmful, according to tests of the air. Reports continued to come in from as far north as 112th Street shortly before midnight. In Lower Manhattan, where the smell had begun to fade, it was back, stronger than before, by 1 a.m.

“We are continuing to sample the air throughout the affected area to make sure there’s nothing hazardous,” said Jarrod Bernstein, an emergency management spokesman. “What the actual cause of the smell is, we really don’t know.”

Everything Leads To Disaster

disaster-cycle.gifThis graphic was created by FEMA. It’s true. Anyway, as you can see Disaster is a vicious cycle where risk reduction, prevention and preparedness all continually lead to Disaster. Perhaps a graphic designer was unwittingly wise about the current administration…

The Structure of Romantic and Sexual Relations at Jefferson High School

Some interview-research was done in a high school and relationships (romantic and sexual) over eighteen months were mapped out. The researchers went in with one hypothesis and came out with an interesting discovery. Here’s the map and here’s the story.

“We went into this study believing we would find a core model, with a small group of people who are sexually active,” Moody said. “We were surprised to find a very different kind of network…”

The most striking feature of the network was a single component that connected 52 percent (288) of the romantically involved students at Jefferson. This means student A had relations with student B, who had relations with student C and so on, connecting all 288 of these students.

Hard to Fathom

It’s hard to imagine the enormity of this catastrophe because it took place on the other side of the word. One of the largest earthquakes in the last century shook the planet, changed the map of the world, affected the rotation of the earth thus shortening the day by a few microseconds, and killed up to 25,000 people.

Twenty-five thousand. It may not be as many people who have died in World Wars, but it is a huge number.