Friam

How to avoid shootings

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Robert J. Cordingley

Re: How to avoid shootings

Plus reports said the type and quantity of ammo sends shudders up your spine:

"...enough to kill just about every student in the school if given enough time, authorities said"

"The chief medical examiner has said the ammunition was a type designed to expend its energy in the victim’s tissues and stay inside the body to inflict the maximum amount of damage."

Robert C

On 12/17/12 9:17 AM, Barry MacKichan wrote:

Quail hunting?

On Dec 16, 2012, at 4:43 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Why would anyone need an AK-47?
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Robert J. Cordingley

Re: Unsubscribe

In reply to this post by Stephen Guerin

Stephen
Thanks
Robert

On 12/17/12 8:32 AM, Stephen Guerin wrote:

I handled this request.

The link in the footer of list emails should now have a corrected link for managing subscription options including unsubscribe.

-Stephen

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 8:11 AM, Peter Robert Guerzenich Small <[hidden email]> wrote:

Unsubscribe
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Sarbajit Roy (testing)

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Robert J. Cordingley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet
"Invented" in India.
Outlawed 22-2 with Britain and the USofA in favour at the Hague Convention.

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:12 PM, Robert J. Cordingley <[hidden email]> wrote:

Plus reports said the type and quantity of ammo sends shudders up your spine:

"...enough to kill just about every student in the school if given enough time, authorities said"

"The chief medical examiner has said the ammunition was a type designed to expend its energy in the victim’s tissues and stay inside the body to inflict the maximum amount of damage."

Robert C

On 12/17/12 9:17 AM, Barry MacKichan wrote:
Quail hunting?

On Dec 16, 2012, at 4:43 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Why would anyone need an AK-47?
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Steve Smith

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

N -

Your point is well taken...

It is out of the culture that murdered and displaced our native
population that our gun culture emerged and now thrives. It is still
glorified by many, some trying to live it past it's time and some
watching from the sidelines. You don't have to read McCarthy's Blood
Meridian or McMurtry's Comanche Moon to have a hint of how brutal and
thoughtless the dispossessed or displaced Confederate (and in some cases
Union) soldiers were in the last half of the 19th, coming west and
trying to recover from that mess. If we think PTSD was invented in our
middle east or even Vietnam wars, imagine the horrors of the Civil War,
especially where cousins or even brothers found themselves on opposite
sides, crossing bayonets.

I have lived among, and counted as friends, many of the *survivors* of
the native genocide, throughout of my life. It has always been an
incredibly delicate topic, the genocide, the displacement, the many
broken treaties and promises. None of my friends ever wanted to talk
much about it, even though they knew I was as sympathetic as anyone not
the victim could be. An overt apology to them felt quite empty and
hollow, and specious in too many ways. Being a friend was the most
(least?) I could do.

I had a Navajo friend in college who was married to a Hopi woman during
the worst of the Navajo-Hopi resentments. They couldn't go home, at
least not with their spouses, so they became somewhat unusually
available for friendships with us, their white-eyed neighbors. Our
daughters played in the dirt together outside our adjoining apartments.
We shared meals. He was simultaneously studying the hydrology (MS
Geology, NAU) of the Kayenta basin and working as an activist to get the
outrageous coal mining practices there at least looked at if not
stopped. I was helping find the dirt on their tribal chairman Peter
McDonald that eventually brought him down.

One of my good friends in middle school was one of two adopted brothers,
also Navajo, living with their adoptive do-gooder white christian
parents. The parents tried, they cared, but they were oh so clueless.
They were "good boys" until the testosterone kicked in, and then they
became warriors without a cause. I remained friends as best I could as
they spun out in place, exploring alcohol and it's it's dangers to their
metabolisms and resorting to fairly random violence with others to try
to wrestle their own daemons. I lost track after high school.

My first crush was a Zuni girl in my first grade class who was as tall
as I. To get the yayas out of us, the teacher made us run around the
building twice each morning. To avoid the crowd of other running kids,
I tried running the opposite way. I met her at the far corner, she
leading the pack and me going full tilt on my own. We collided
cheekbone to cheekbone (this is when I realized we were the same
height)... and I got teased mercilessly by my father that I had gotten
my black eye from a girl on the playground. LIttle did he know that I
cherished that bruise and missed her as much as a 7 year old can when
her family moved away that year.

A good friend of mine today is Lakota Sioux and is becoming a successful
(or at least surviving) artist in his own right after 40 years of
careening through wives, children, grandchildren, alcohol, drugs,
homelessness. He won't hear white man's apologies, there is just too
much water under that bridge to pretend to put it back at the headwaters.

And what we couldn't do with smallpox and cholera, with swords, bowie
knives and repeating rifles, we did with boarding schools, then alcohol,
with white sugar, with white flour unto diabetes and organ/system failure.

I feel mildly lucky to have lived places where the genocide and/or
displacement was not as devastatingly complete as it was in the
heartland, the South and much of the East and West coasts. I live
within the boundaries of a Tewa-speaking Pueblo and visited their
Christmas sale on Saturday and was surprised, shocked, offended and
relieved all at once to see no other white faces. The vendors were not
just San Ildefonso, but from all over pueblo country from Laguna to
Taos. I was welcome, even though most of the folks there do not know
me personally... I feel lucky to have known and called friend
individuals from many indigenous groups from the Dacotahs to northern
Mexico. Few, if any, are not *still* touched by the legacy of the
abuses by my own ancestors, the invaders, the murderers, the
displacers. And again or still, I don't know how to apologize to them.

I am just now reading an oral history of the father of a childhood
friend. Now 98, he was the son of early homesteaders from England who
were coming in on the trailing edge of the US's suppression,
enslavement, and destruction of the Apaches in the area of Western NM
(near where the fires were last year). It is clear that they hardly
knew anything at that time (his youth, during the first half of the 19th
century) of what had come just before... there was a myopia that came
with limited education and transportation and something like
desperation. I honestly don't think he knew what had happened except
for the last of the fierce geurilla battles waged by the few survivors
(Victorio, Geronimo, Ju, etc.) raiding and hiding in those mountains.
He spent his entire life in the back country raising sheep, cattle, etc.
His was a hard but innocent life. Perhaps not unlike those who were
displaced from the lands his family occupied. His son (my friend) came
to school in 3rd grade with his brother in 6th, neither having ever had
formal schooling. Their mother had decided to give them a life that
was more promising than theirs had been. They still spent summers on
the ranch and on the fire watchtower where their mother spent her
summers. My friend went on to become the county drug interceptor
(stealing drug drops from airplanes out of Mexico and selling them in
Arizona) while his cousin (another good friend) became the county sheriff.

I at least try not to celebrate or romanticize the "consquistadors" or
the "indian fighters" that were the sharp-edge of that horror. But the
remaining abusers, the blunter edge, I think they were quite a bit more
innocent. And I think *we* are them still. The best I can tell, better
than an apology would be a change of heart. For us to learn from those
mistakes and pull back our colonial/empire which now lives almost
entirely in the corporate extractive exploitation of the third world.
My Lakota friend has an art project called "Not Afraid to Look" that
begins to address this.

Apologies are important for the apologizers... but don't be surprised if
they can't be heard until we change our ways... ( said the man filling
his tank with gasoline from the middle east, typing on a computer
manufactured in China, eating grapes from South America, watching movies
laced with violence and exploitation...)

- S

> Thanks, Russ. At least somebody had the grace to apologize. I don't think
> the word apologize is in our national lexicon. Can you IMAGINE what would
> happen if Obama were to apologize on behalf of the nation for our infection,
> slaughter, displacement, and confinement of indigenous Americans.
> [shudder] N
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russell Standish
> Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2012 11:08 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings
>
> On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 10:56:44PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>> And you forgot our genocide? For some reason I imagine that the
>> Australian genocide was less vicious. I hope the Australians on the
>> list will weigh in on that. N
>>
>>
>>
> Sadly, our treatment of the Aborigines was pretty appalling, right up to
> 1968, when they were finally given the vote and recognised as citizens of
> our country. And that included mass genocide, in places like Tasmania, and
> kidnapping of children by the state.
>
> It looks like our generation has finally made some effort to apologise, and
> fix up the mess created by previous generations, but there is still a long
> way to go before there is true equality between aboriginal and
> non-aboriginal people.
>
> Cheers
>

Robert J. Cordingley

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Sarbajit Roy (testing)

So do you suppose an agreement could be made on banning some ammunition, rationing others and letting people have as many guns as they like? Or would that just be an incentive to create a black market in ammunition with no real benefit?

Robert C

On 12/17/12 9:58 AM, Sarbajit Roy wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet
"Invented" in India.
Outlawed 22-2 with Britain and the USofA in favour at the Hague Convention.
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:12 PM, Robert J. Cordingley <[hidden email]> wrote:
Plus reports said the type and quantity of ammo sends shudders up your spine:

"...enough to kill just about every student in the school if given enough time, authorities said"

"The chief medical examiner has said the ammunition was a type designed to expend its energy in the victim’s tissues and stay inside the body to inflict the maximum amount of damage."

Robert C

On 12/17/12 9:17 AM, Barry MacKichan wrote:
Quail hunting?

On Dec 16, 2012, at 4:43 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Why would anyone need an AK-47?
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Roger Critchlow-2

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Sarbajit Roy (testing)

I have now supplemented my morning reading with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre.

The Dunblane school massacre inspired the Port Arthur perpetrator, resulted in the deaths of a classroom of 5 and 6 year old students and their teacher, and led to the current dearth of legal personal hand guns in the UK. And as already noted, the Port Arthur massacre led to the revision of gun control law in Australia.

At the end of this research, I find myself humming a tune from The Threepenny Opera. The "Song of the Insufficiency of Human Struggling" aka "Useless Song": http://kwf.org/media/threepenny/useless.mp3

Since people ain't much good, just hit 'em on the hood, and though you hit 'em good and hard, they're never out for good.

Useless it's useless, even when you're playing rough, take it from me it's useless, you're never rough enough.

I am not sure why it percolated up here, it is a truly unconscious contribution to the discussion.

-- rec --

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]> wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet
"Invented" in India.
Outlawed 22-2 with Britain and the USofA in favour at the Hague Convention.
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:12 PM, Robert J. Cordingley <[hidden email]> wrote:
Plus reports said the type and quantity of ammo sends shudders up your spine:

"...enough to kill just about every student in the school if given enough time, authorities said"

"The chief medical examiner has said the ammunition was a type designed to expend its energy in the victim’s tissues and stay inside the body to inflict the maximum amount of damage."

Robert C

On 12/17/12 9:17 AM, Barry MacKichan wrote:
Quail hunting?

On Dec 16, 2012, at 4:43 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Why would anyone need an AK-47?
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Steve Smith

Re: How to avoid shootings

I am not sure why it percolated up here, it is a truly unconscious contribution to the discussion.

-- rec --

Glad there are others here whose unconscious insists on trying to contribute... at least yours is concise!

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Nick Thompson

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2

Roger,

Actually that’s PRE-conscious. Unconscious is all the grubby, icky stuff; preconscious is the lilty, playful, creative stuff. It was vanGogh’s preconscious that did the paintings; it was his unconscious that cut off his ear.

You heard it first from me.

Nick

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 11:35 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings

I have now supplemented my morning reading with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre.

Since people ain't much good, just hit 'em on the hood, and though you hit 'em good and hard, they're never out for good.

Useless it's useless, even when you're playing rough, take it from me it's useless, you're never rough enough.

I am not sure why it percolated up here, it is a truly unconscious contribution to the discussion.

-- rec --

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]> wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet
"Invented" in India.
Outlawed 22-2 with Britain and the USofA in favour at the Hague Convention.

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:12 PM, Robert J. Cordingley <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 12/17/12 9:17 AM, Barry MacKichan wrote:

Quail hunting?

On Dec 16, 2012, at 4:43 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Why would anyone need an AK-47?

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Nick Thompson

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Thanks, steve. There s somebody I would like to share this with, not on th
list. Is that OK? N

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 11:30 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings

N -

Your point is well taken...

It is out of the culture that murdered and displaced our native population
that our gun culture emerged and now thrives. It is still glorified by
many, some trying to live it past it's time and some watching from the
sidelines. You don't have to read McCarthy's Blood Meridian or McMurtry's
Comanche Moon to have a hint of how brutal and thoughtless the dispossessed
or displaced Confederate (and in some cases
Union) soldiers were in the last half of the 19th, coming west and trying to
recover from that mess. If we think PTSD was invented in our middle east or
even Vietnam wars, imagine the horrors of the Civil War, especially where
cousins or even brothers found themselves on opposite sides, crossing
bayonets.

I have lived among, and counted as friends, many of the *survivors* of the
native genocide, throughout of my life. It has always been an incredibly
delicate topic, the genocide, the displacement, the many
broken treaties and promises. None of my friends ever wanted to talk
much about it, even though they knew I was as sympathetic as anyone not the
victim could be. An overt apology to them felt quite empty and
hollow, and specious in too many ways. Being a friend was the most
(least?) I could do.

I had a Navajo friend in college who was married to a Hopi woman during the
worst of the Navajo-Hopi resentments. They couldn't go home, at least not
with their spouses, so they became somewhat unusually available for
friendships with us, their white-eyed neighbors. Our daughters played in
the dirt together outside our adjoining apartments.
We shared meals. He was simultaneously studying the hydrology (MS Geology,
NAU) of the Kayenta basin and working as an activist to get the outrageous
coal mining practices there at least looked at if not stopped. I was
helping find the dirt on their tribal chairman Peter McDonald that
eventually brought him down.

One of my good friends in middle school was one of two adopted brothers,
also Navajo, living with their adoptive do-gooder white christian parents.
The parents tried, they cared, but they were oh so clueless.
They were "good boys" until the testosterone kicked in, and then they became
warriors without a cause. I remained friends as best I could as they spun
out in place, exploring alcohol and it's it's dangers to their metabolisms
and resorting to fairly random violence with others to try
to wrestle their own daemons. I lost track after high school.

My first crush was a Zuni girl in my first grade class who was as tall as I.
To get the yayas out of us, the teacher made us run around the
building twice each morning. To avoid the crowd of other running kids,
I tried running the opposite way. I met her at the far corner, she leading
the pack and me going full tilt on my own. We collided cheekbone to
cheekbone (this is when I realized we were the same height)... and I got
teased mercilessly by my father that I had gotten my black eye from a girl
on the playground. LIttle did he know that I cherished that bruise and
missed her as much as a 7 year old can when her family moved away that year.

A good friend of mine today is Lakota Sioux and is becoming a successful (or
at least surviving) artist in his own right after 40 years of careening
through wives, children, grandchildren, alcohol, drugs,
homelessness. He won't hear white man's apologies, there is just too
much water under that bridge to pretend to put it back at the headwaters.

And what we couldn't do with smallpox and cholera, with swords, bowie knives
and repeating rifles, we did with boarding schools, then alcohol, with white
sugar, with white flour unto diabetes and organ/system failure.

I feel mildly lucky to have lived places where the genocide and/or
displacement was not as devastatingly complete as it was in the heartland,
the South and much of the East and West coasts. I live within the
boundaries of a Tewa-speaking Pueblo and visited their Christmas sale on
Saturday and was surprised, shocked, offended and relieved all at once to
see no other white faces. The vendors were not just San Ildefonso, but from
all over pueblo country from Laguna to
Taos. I was welcome, even though most of the folks there do not know
me personally... I feel lucky to have known and called friend individuals
from many indigenous groups from the Dacotahs to northern
Mexico. Few, if any, are not *still* touched by the legacy of the
abuses by my own ancestors, the invaders, the murderers, the displacers.
And again or still, I don't know how to apologize to them.

I am just now reading an oral history of the father of a childhood friend.
Now 98, he was the son of early homesteaders from England who were coming in
on the trailing edge of the US's suppression, enslavement, and destruction
of the Apaches in the area of Western NM
(near where the fires were last year). It is clear that they hardly
knew anything at that time (his youth, during the first half of the 19th
century) of what had come just before... there was a myopia that came with
limited education and transportation and something like
desperation. I honestly don't think he knew what had happened except
for the last of the fierce geurilla battles waged by the few survivors
(Victorio, Geronimo, Ju, etc.) raiding and hiding in those mountains.
He spent his entire life in the back country raising sheep, cattle, etc.
His was a hard but innocent life. Perhaps not unlike those who were
displaced from the lands his family occupied. His son (my friend) came to
school in 3rd grade with his brother in 6th, neither having ever had
formal schooling. Their mother had decided to give them a life that
was more promising than theirs had been. They still spent summers on the
ranch and on the fire watchtower where their mother spent her
summers. My friend went on to become the county drug interceptor
(stealing drug drops from airplanes out of Mexico and selling them in
Arizona) while his cousin (another good friend) became the county sheriff.

I at least try not to celebrate or romanticize the "consquistadors" or
the "indian fighters" that were the sharp-edge of that horror. But the
remaining abusers, the blunter edge, I think they were quite a bit more
innocent. And I think *we* are them still. The best I can tell, better
than an apology would be a change of heart. For us to learn from those
mistakes and pull back our colonial/empire which now lives almost entirely
in the corporate extractive exploitation of the third world.
My Lakota friend has an art project called "Not Afraid to Look" that begins
to address this.

Apologies are important for the apologizers... but don't be surprised if
they can't be heard until we change our ways... ( said the man filling his
tank with gasoline from the middle east, typing on a computer manufactured
in China, eating grapes from South America, watching movies laced with
violence and exploitation...)

- S

> Thanks, Russ. At least somebody had the grace to apologize. I don't
think
> the word apologize is in our national lexicon. Can you IMAGINE what would
> happen if Obama were to apologize on behalf of the nation for our
infection,
> slaughter, displacement, and confinement of indigenous Americans.
> [shudder] N
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russell
Standish

> Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2012 11:08 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings
>
> On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 10:56:44PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>> And you forgot our genocide? For some reason I imagine that the
>> Australian genocide was less vicious. I hope the Australians on the
>> list will weigh in on that. N
>>
>>
>>
> Sadly, our treatment of the Aborigines was pretty appalling, right up to
> 1968, when they were finally given the vote and recognised as citizens of
> our country. And that included mass genocide, in places like Tasmania, and
> kidnapping of children by the state.
>
> It looks like our generation has finally made some effort to apologise,

and
> fix up the mess created by previous generations, but there is still a long
> way to go before there is true equality between aboriginal and
> non-aboriginal people.
>
> Cheers
>

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Nick Thompson

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Thanks, Steve. There's a friend, NOT on the list, I would like to forward
this to. May I? N

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 11:30 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings

N -

Your point is well taken...

It is out of the culture that murdered and displaced our native population
that our gun culture emerged and now thrives. It is still glorified by
many, some trying to live it past it's time and some watching from the
sidelines. You don't have to read McCarthy's Blood Meridian or McMurtry's
Comanche Moon to have a hint of how brutal and thoughtless the dispossessed
or displaced Confederate (and in some cases
Union) soldiers were in the last half of the 19th, coming west and trying to
recover from that mess. If we think PTSD was invented in our middle east or
even Vietnam wars, imagine the horrors of the Civil War, especially where
cousins or even brothers found themselves on opposite sides, crossing
bayonets.

I have lived among, and counted as friends, many of the *survivors* of the
native genocide, throughout of my life. It has always been an incredibly
delicate topic, the genocide, the displacement, the many
broken treaties and promises. None of my friends ever wanted to talk
much about it, even though they knew I was as sympathetic as anyone not the
victim could be. An overt apology to them felt quite empty and
hollow, and specious in too many ways. Being a friend was the most
(least?) I could do.

I had a Navajo friend in college who was married to a Hopi woman during the
worst of the Navajo-Hopi resentments. They couldn't go home, at least not
with their spouses, so they became somewhat unusually available for
friendships with us, their white-eyed neighbors. Our daughters played in
the dirt together outside our adjoining apartments.
We shared meals. He was simultaneously studying the hydrology (MS Geology,
NAU) of the Kayenta basin and working as an activist to get the outrageous
coal mining practices there at least looked at if not stopped. I was
helping find the dirt on their tribal chairman Peter McDonald that
eventually brought him down.

One of my good friends in middle school was one of two adopted brothers,
also Navajo, living with their adoptive do-gooder white christian parents.
The parents tried, they cared, but they were oh so clueless.
They were "good boys" until the testosterone kicked in, and then they became
warriors without a cause. I remained friends as best I could as they spun
out in place, exploring alcohol and it's it's dangers to their metabolisms
and resorting to fairly random violence with others to try
to wrestle their own daemons. I lost track after high school.

My first crush was a Zuni girl in my first grade class who was as tall as I.
To get the yayas out of us, the teacher made us run around the
building twice each morning. To avoid the crowd of other running kids,
I tried running the opposite way. I met her at the far corner, she leading
the pack and me going full tilt on my own. We collided cheekbone to
cheekbone (this is when I realized we were the same height)... and I got
teased mercilessly by my father that I had gotten my black eye from a girl
on the playground. LIttle did he know that I cherished that bruise and
missed her as much as a 7 year old can when her family moved away that year.

A good friend of mine today is Lakota Sioux and is becoming a successful (or
at least surviving) artist in his own right after 40 years of careening
through wives, children, grandchildren, alcohol, drugs,
homelessness. He won't hear white man's apologies, there is just too
much water under that bridge to pretend to put it back at the headwaters.

And what we couldn't do with smallpox and cholera, with swords, bowie knives
and repeating rifles, we did with boarding schools, then alcohol, with white
sugar, with white flour unto diabetes and organ/system failure.

I feel mildly lucky to have lived places where the genocide and/or
displacement was not as devastatingly complete as it was in the heartland,
the South and much of the East and West coasts. I live within the
boundaries of a Tewa-speaking Pueblo and visited their Christmas sale on
Saturday and was surprised, shocked, offended and relieved all at once to
see no other white faces. The vendors were not just San Ildefonso, but from
all over pueblo country from Laguna to
Taos. I was welcome, even though most of the folks there do not know
me personally... I feel lucky to have known and called friend individuals
from many indigenous groups from the Dacotahs to northern
Mexico. Few, if any, are not *still* touched by the legacy of the
abuses by my own ancestors, the invaders, the murderers, the displacers.
And again or still, I don't know how to apologize to them.

I am just now reading an oral history of the father of a childhood friend.
Now 98, he was the son of early homesteaders from England who were coming in
on the trailing edge of the US's suppression, enslavement, and destruction
of the Apaches in the area of Western NM
(near where the fires were last year). It is clear that they hardly
knew anything at that time (his youth, during the first half of the 19th
century) of what had come just before... there was a myopia that came with
limited education and transportation and something like
desperation. I honestly don't think he knew what had happened except
for the last of the fierce geurilla battles waged by the few survivors
(Victorio, Geronimo, Ju, etc.) raiding and hiding in those mountains.
He spent his entire life in the back country raising sheep, cattle, etc.
His was a hard but innocent life. Perhaps not unlike those who were
displaced from the lands his family occupied. His son (my friend) came to
school in 3rd grade with his brother in 6th, neither having ever had
formal schooling. Their mother had decided to give them a life that
was more promising than theirs had been. They still spent summers on the
ranch and on the fire watchtower where their mother spent her
summers. My friend went on to become the county drug interceptor
(stealing drug drops from airplanes out of Mexico and selling them in
Arizona) while his cousin (another good friend) became the county sheriff.

I at least try not to celebrate or romanticize the "consquistadors" or
the "indian fighters" that were the sharp-edge of that horror. But the
remaining abusers, the blunter edge, I think they were quite a bit more
innocent. And I think *we* are them still. The best I can tell, better
than an apology would be a change of heart. For us to learn from those
mistakes and pull back our colonial/empire which now lives almost entirely
in the corporate extractive exploitation of the third world.
My Lakota friend has an art project called "Not Afraid to Look" that begins
to address this.

Apologies are important for the apologizers... but don't be surprised if
they can't be heard until we change our ways... ( said the man filling his
tank with gasoline from the middle east, typing on a computer manufactured
in China, eating grapes from South America, watching movies laced with
violence and exploitation...)

- S

> Thanks, Russ. At least somebody had the grace to apologize. I don't
think
> the word apologize is in our national lexicon. Can you IMAGINE what would
> happen if Obama were to apologize on behalf of the nation for our
infection,
> slaughter, displacement, and confinement of indigenous Americans.
> [shudder] N
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russell
Standish

Roger Critchlow-2

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Thanks for the clarification, Nick.

Now, from the collective pre-conscious, http://www.nssf.org/ may be reached at:

National Shooting Sports Foundation
Flintlock Ridge Office Center
11 Mile Hill Road
Newtown, CT 06470-2359

The times has an article, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/nyregion/in-newtown-conn-a-stiff-resistance-to-gun-restrictions.html, about recent attempts to control local shooting sportsmen in Newtown:

“I’ve hunted for many years, but the police department was getting complaints of shooting in the morning, in the evening, and of people shooting at propane gas tanks just to see them explode,” Mr. Faxon said.

-- rec --

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 12:10 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger,

Actually that’s PRE-conscious. Unconscious is all the grubby, icky stuff; preconscious is the lilty, playful, creative stuff. It was vanGogh’s preconscious that did the paintings; it was his unconscious that cut off his ear.

You heard it first from me.

Nick

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 11:35 AM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings

I have now supplemented my morning reading with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre.
The Dunblane school massacre inspired the Port Arthur perpetrator, resulted in the deaths of a classroom of 5 and 6 year old students and their teacher, and led to the current dearth of legal personal hand guns in the UK. And as already noted, the Port Arthur massacre led to the revision of gun control law in Australia.

At the end of this research, I find myself humming a tune from The Threepenny Opera. The "Song of the Insufficiency of Human Struggling" aka "Useless Song": http://kwf.org/media/threepenny/useless.mp3

Since people ain't much good, just hit 'em on the hood, and though you hit 'em good and hard, they're never out for good.

Useless it's useless, even when you're playing rough, take it from me it's useless, you're never rough enough.

I am not sure why it percolated up here, it is a truly unconscious contribution to the discussion.

-- rec --
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Sarbajit Roy <[hidden email]> wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet
"Invented" in India.
Outlawed 22-2 with Britain and the USofA in favour at the Hague Convention.
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:12 PM, Robert J. Cordingley <[hidden email]> wrote:
Plus reports said the type and quantity of ammo sends shudders up your spine:

"...enough to kill just about every student in the school if given enough time, authorities said"

"The chief medical examiner has said the ammunition was a type designed to expend its energy in the victim’s tissues and stay inside the body to inflict the maximum amount of damage."

Robert C

On 12/17/12 9:17 AM, Barry MacKichan wrote:
Quail hunting?

On Dec 16, 2012, at 4:43 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

Why would anyone need an AK-47?
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Steve Smith

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

N -

Yes, of course... the list is archived and (apparently?) open to the
world and indexed by search engines, so I assume that the audience is
the universe and the persistence is indefinite.

I'm glad you found it of interest... I worry that my rambling anecdotal
introspective missives are little more than eyeroll and <delete> fodder
for many here...

I understand that I *am* somewhat out of the range of the typical (and
appropriate?) range for this forum...

- S

> Thanks, steve. There s somebody I would like to share this with, not on th
> list. Is that OK? N
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 11:30 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings
>
> N -
>
> Your point is well taken...
>
> It is out of the culture that murdered and displaced our native population
> that our gun culture emerged and now thrives. It is still glorified by
> many, some trying to live it past it's time and some watching from the
> sidelines. You don't have to read McCarthy's Blood Meridian or McMurtry's
> Comanche Moon to have a hint of how brutal and thoughtless the dispossessed
> or displaced Confederate (and in some cases
> Union) soldiers were in the last half of the 19th, coming west and trying to
> recover from that mess. If we think PTSD was invented in our middle east or
> even Vietnam wars, imagine the horrors of the Civil War, especially where
> cousins or even brothers found themselves on opposite sides, crossing
> bayonets.
>
> I have lived among, and counted as friends, many of the *survivors* of the
> native genocide, throughout of my life. It has always been an incredibly
> delicate topic, the genocide, the displacement, the many
> broken treaties and promises. None of my friends ever wanted to talk
> much about it, even though they knew I was as sympathetic as anyone not the
> victim could be. An overt apology to them felt quite empty and
> hollow, and specious in too many ways. Being a friend was the most
> (least?) I could do.
>
> I had a Navajo friend in college who was married to a Hopi woman during the
> worst of the Navajo-Hopi resentments. They couldn't go home, at least not
> with their spouses, so they became somewhat unusually available for
> friendships with us, their white-eyed neighbors. Our daughters played in
> the dirt together outside our adjoining apartments.
> We shared meals. He was simultaneously studying the hydrology (MS Geology,
> NAU) of the Kayenta basin and working as an activist to get the outrageous
> coal mining practices there at least looked at if not stopped. I was
> helping find the dirt on their tribal chairman Peter McDonald that
> eventually brought him down.
>
> One of my good friends in middle school was one of two adopted brothers,
> also Navajo, living with their adoptive do-gooder white christian parents.
> The parents tried, they cared, but they were oh so clueless.
> They were "good boys" until the testosterone kicked in, and then they became
> warriors without a cause. I remained friends as best I could as they spun
> out in place, exploring alcohol and it's it's dangers to their metabolisms
> and resorting to fairly random violence with others to try
> to wrestle their own daemons. I lost track after high school.
>
> My first crush was a Zuni girl in my first grade class who was as tall as I.
> To get the yayas out of us, the teacher made us run around the
> building twice each morning. To avoid the crowd of other running kids,
> I tried running the opposite way. I met her at the far corner, she leading
> the pack and me going full tilt on my own. We collided cheekbone to
> cheekbone (this is when I realized we were the same height)... and I got
> teased mercilessly by my father that I had gotten my black eye from a girl
> on the playground. LIttle did he know that I cherished that bruise and
> missed her as much as a 7 year old can when her family moved away that year.
>
> A good friend of mine today is Lakota Sioux and is becoming a successful (or
> at least surviving) artist in his own right after 40 years of careening
> through wives, children, grandchildren, alcohol, drugs,
> homelessness. He won't hear white man's apologies, there is just too
> much water under that bridge to pretend to put it back at the headwaters.
>
> And what we couldn't do with smallpox and cholera, with swords, bowie knives
> and repeating rifles, we did with boarding schools, then alcohol, with white
> sugar, with white flour unto diabetes and organ/system failure.
>
> I feel mildly lucky to have lived places where the genocide and/or
> displacement was not as devastatingly complete as it was in the heartland,
> the South and much of the East and West coasts. I live within the
> boundaries of a Tewa-speaking Pueblo and visited their Christmas sale on
> Saturday and was surprised, shocked, offended and relieved all at once to
> see no other white faces. The vendors were not just San Ildefonso, but from
> all over pueblo country from Laguna to
> Taos. I was welcome, even though most of the folks there do not know
> me personally... I feel lucky to have known and called friend individuals
> from many indigenous groups from the Dacotahs to northern
> Mexico. Few, if any, are not *still* touched by the legacy of the
> abuses by my own ancestors, the invaders, the murderers, the displacers.
> And again or still, I don't know how to apologize to them.
>
> I am just now reading an oral history of the father of a childhood friend.
> Now 98, he was the son of early homesteaders from England who were coming in
> on the trailing edge of the US's suppression, enslavement, and destruction
> of the Apaches in the area of Western NM
> (near where the fires were last year). It is clear that they hardly
> knew anything at that time (his youth, during the first half of the 19th
> century) of what had come just before... there was a myopia that came with
> limited education and transportation and something like
> desperation. I honestly don't think he knew what had happened except
> for the last of the fierce geurilla battles waged by the few survivors
> (Victorio, Geronimo, Ju, etc.) raiding and hiding in those mountains.
> He spent his entire life in the back country raising sheep, cattle, etc.
> His was a hard but innocent life. Perhaps not unlike those who were
> displaced from the lands his family occupied. His son (my friend) came to
> school in 3rd grade with his brother in 6th, neither having ever had
> formal schooling. Their mother had decided to give them a life that
> was more promising than theirs had been. They still spent summers on the
> ranch and on the fire watchtower where their mother spent her
> summers. My friend went on to become the county drug interceptor
> (stealing drug drops from airplanes out of Mexico and selling them in
> Arizona) while his cousin (another good friend) became the county sheriff.
>
> I at least try not to celebrate or romanticize the "consquistadors" or
> the "indian fighters" that were the sharp-edge of that horror. But the
> remaining abusers, the blunter edge, I think they were quite a bit more
> innocent. And I think *we* are them still. The best I can tell, better
> than an apology would be a change of heart. For us to learn from those
> mistakes and pull back our colonial/empire which now lives almost entirely
> in the corporate extractive exploitation of the third world.
> My Lakota friend has an art project called "Not Afraid to Look" that begins
> to address this.
>
> Apologies are important for the apologizers... but don't be surprised if
> they can't be heard until we change our ways... ( said the man filling his
> tank with gasoline from the middle east, typing on a computer manufactured
> in China, eating grapes from South America, watching movies laced with
> violence and exploitation...)
>
> - S
>
>
>> Thanks, Russ. At least somebody had the grace to apologize. I don't
> think
>> the word apologize is in our national lexicon. Can you IMAGINE what would
>> happen if Obama were to apologize on behalf of the nation for our
> infection,
>> slaughter, displacement, and confinement of indigenous Americans.
>> [shudder] N
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russell
> Standish
>> Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2012 11:08 PM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 10:56:44PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>> And you forgot our genocide? For some reason I imagine that the
>>> Australian genocide was less vicious. I hope the Australians on the
>>> list will weigh in on that. N
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Sadly, our treatment of the Aborigines was pretty appalling, right up to
>> 1968, when they were finally given the vote and recognised as citizens of
>> our country. And that included mass genocide, in places like Tasmania, and
>> kidnapping of children by the state.
>>
>> It looks like our generation has finally made some effort to apologise,
> and
>> fix up the mess created by previous generations, but there is still a long
>> way to go before there is true equality between aboriginal and
>> non-aboriginal people.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Roger Critchlow-2

Hi,

When it comes to gun control and parents, does the government try to
cross-examine parents seeking purchase of weapons to be sure their
remarks about their children are sufficiently detached and analytical?
Do we expect parents to know the inner lives of their introverted
children, and even adult children? The hopes by and expectations of
parents seem counter to an honest assessment of an odd child, especially
in upper-middle class Connecticut. It seems Nancy Lanza did have a
basic misapprehension of her son. If she didn't she would have known
it was inappropriate to have such efficient weapons in the house.

I think the kind of cultural change that would be needed to identify
cases like Adam Lanza would, in general, be considered too intrusive and
rejected by most Americans. It would involve, I expect, that
apparently introverted kids would receive psychological assessments, and
that those assessments, would need to be actionable without parental
consent. Like most school assessments, they would discourage any
subtle judgement by the fraction of teachers capable of the task.

Marcus

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Nick Thompson

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

I dunno, steve. You seem right in the groove to me! Thought full
technologist. I don't even have the technological thread. So they'lll
exile me long before they exile you.

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 9:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings

N -

Yes, of course... the list is archived and (apparently?) open to the world
and indexed by search engines, so I assume that the audience is the universe
and the persistence is indefinite.

I'm glad you found it of interest... I worry that my rambling anecdotal
introspective missives are little more than eyeroll and <delete> fodder for
many here...

I understand that I *am* somewhat out of the range of the typical (and
appropriate?) range for this forum...

- S

> Thanks, steve. There s somebody I would like to share this with, not
> on th list. Is that OK? N
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve
> Smith
> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 11:30 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings
>
> N -
>
> Your point is well taken...
>
> It is out of the culture that murdered and displaced our native
> population that our gun culture emerged and now thrives. It is still
> glorified by many, some trying to live it past it's time and some
> watching from the sidelines. You don't have to read McCarthy's Blood
> Meridian or McMurtry's Comanche Moon to have a hint of how brutal and
> thoughtless the dispossessed or displaced Confederate (and in some
> cases
> Union) soldiers were in the last half of the 19th, coming west and
> trying to recover from that mess. If we think PTSD was invented in
> our middle east or even Vietnam wars, imagine the horrors of the Civil
> War, especially where cousins or even brothers found themselves on
> opposite sides, crossing bayonets.
>
> I have lived among, and counted as friends, many of the *survivors* of
> the native genocide, throughout of my life. It has always been an
> incredibly delicate topic, the genocide, the displacement, the many
> broken treaties and promises. None of my friends ever wanted to talk
> much about it, even though they knew I was as sympathetic as anyone
> not the victim could be. An overt apology to them felt quite empty and
> hollow, and specious in too many ways. Being a friend was the most
> (least?) I could do.
>
> I had a Navajo friend in college who was married to a Hopi woman
> during the worst of the Navajo-Hopi resentments. They couldn't go
> home, at least not with their spouses, so they became somewhat
> unusually available for friendships with us, their white-eyed
> neighbors. Our daughters played in the dirt together outside our

adjoining apartments.
> We shared meals. He was simultaneously studying the hydrology (MS
> Geology,
> NAU) of the Kayenta basin and working as an activist to get the
> outrageous coal mining practices there at least looked at if not
> stopped. I was helping find the dirt on their tribal chairman Peter
> McDonald that eventually brought him down.
>
> One of my good friends in middle school was one of two adopted
> brothers, also Navajo, living with their adoptive do-gooder white
christian parents.
> The parents tried, they cared, but they were oh so clueless.
> They were "good boys" until the testosterone kicked in, and then they
> became warriors without a cause. I remained friends as best I could
> as they spun out in place, exploring alcohol and it's it's dangers to
> their metabolisms and resorting to fairly random violence with others to
try
> to wrestle their own daemons. I lost track after high school.
>
> My first crush was a Zuni girl in my first grade class who was as tall as
I.
> To get the yayas out of us, the teacher made us run around the
> building twice each morning. To avoid the crowd of other running kids,
> I tried running the opposite way. I met her at the far corner, she
> leading the pack and me going full tilt on my own. We collided
> cheekbone to cheekbone (this is when I realized we were the same
> height)... and I got teased mercilessly by my father that I had
> gotten my black eye from a girl on the playground. LIttle did he know
> that I cherished that bruise and missed her as much as a 7 year old can
when her family moved away that year.

>
> A good friend of mine today is Lakota Sioux and is becoming a
> successful (or at least surviving) artist in his own right after 40
> years of careening through wives, children, grandchildren, alcohol, drugs,
> homelessness. He won't hear white man's apologies, there is just too
> much water under that bridge to pretend to put it back at the headwaters.
>
> And what we couldn't do with smallpox and cholera, with swords, bowie
> knives and repeating rifles, we did with boarding schools, then
> alcohol, with white sugar, with white flour unto diabetes and organ/system

failure.

>
> I feel mildly lucky to have lived places where the genocide and/or
> displacement was not as devastatingly complete as it was in the
> heartland, the South and much of the East and West coasts. I live
> within the boundaries of a Tewa-speaking Pueblo and visited their
> Christmas sale on Saturday and was surprised, shocked, offended and
> relieved all at once to see no other white faces. The vendors were
> not just San Ildefonso, but from all over pueblo country from Laguna to
> Taos. I was welcome, even though most of the folks there do not know
> me personally... I feel lucky to have known and called friend
> individuals from many indigenous groups from the Dacotahs to northern
> Mexico. Few, if any, are not *still* touched by the legacy of the
> abuses by my own ancestors, the invaders, the murderers, the displacers.
> And again or still, I don't know how to apologize to them.
>
> I am just now reading an oral history of the father of a childhood friend.
> Now 98, he was the son of early homesteaders from England who were
> coming in on the trailing edge of the US's suppression, enslavement,
> and destruction of the Apaches in the area of Western NM
> (near where the fires were last year). It is clear that they hardly
> knew anything at that time (his youth, during the first half of the
> 19th
> century) of what had come just before... there was a myopia that came
> with limited education and transportation and something like
> desperation. I honestly don't think he knew what had happened except
> for the last of the fierce geurilla battles waged by the few survivors
> (Victorio, Geronimo, Ju, etc.) raiding and hiding in those mountains.
> He spent his entire life in the back country raising sheep, cattle, etc.
> His was a hard but innocent life. Perhaps not unlike those who
> were displaced from the lands his family occupied. His son (my
> friend) came to school in 3rd grade with his brother in 6th, neither

having ever had

> formal schooling. Their mother had decided to give them a life that
> was more promising than theirs had been. They still spent summers on
> the ranch and on the fire watchtower where their mother spent her
> summers. My friend went on to become the county drug interceptor
> (stealing drug drops from airplanes out of Mexico and selling them in
> Arizona) while his cousin (another good friend) became the county sheriff.
>
> I at least try not to celebrate or romanticize the "consquistadors" or
> the "indian fighters" that were the sharp-edge of that horror. But the
> remaining abusers, the blunter edge, I think they were quite a bit
> more innocent. And I think *we* are them still. The best I can tell,
> better than an apology would be a change of heart. For us to learn
> from those mistakes and pull back our colonial/empire which now lives
> almost entirely in the corporate extractive exploitation of the third

world.

> My Lakota friend has an art project called "Not Afraid to Look" that
> begins to address this.
>
> Apologies are important for the apologizers... but don't be surprised
> if they can't be heard until we change our ways... ( said the man
> filling his tank with gasoline from the middle east, typing on a
> computer manufactured in China, eating grapes from South America,
> watching movies laced with violence and exploitation...)
>
> - S
>
>
>> Thanks, Russ. At least somebody had the grace to apologize. I don't
> think
>> the word apologize is in our national lexicon. Can you IMAGINE what
>> would happen if Obama were to apologize on behalf of the nation for
>> our
> infection,
>> slaughter, displacement, and confinement of indigenous Americans.
>> [shudder] N
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russell
> Standish
>> Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2012 11:08 PM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 10:56:44PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>>> And you forgot our genocide? For some reason I imagine that the
>>> Australian genocide was less vicious. I hope the Australians on the
>>> list will weigh in on that. N
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Sadly, our treatment of the Aborigines was pretty appalling, right up
>> to 1968, when they were finally given the vote and recognised as
>> citizens of our country. And that included mass genocide, in places
>> like Tasmania, and kidnapping of children by the state.
>>
>> It looks like our generation has finally made some effort to
>> apologise,
> and
>> fix up the mess created by previous generations, but there is still a
>> long way to go before there is true equality between aboriginal and
>> non-aboriginal people.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe
> at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe
> at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

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Nick Thompson

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

So, Marcus. You would make no changes in things as they are? Note that both
Australia and Scotland have made changes in gun deaths recently by making
changes in gun laws. N

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2012 12:39 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings

Hi,

When it comes to gun control and parents, does the government try to
cross-examine parents seeking purchase of weapons to be sure their remarks
about their children are sufficiently detached and analytical?
Do we expect parents to know the inner lives of their introverted children,
and even adult children? The hopes by and expectations of parents seem
counter to an honest assessment of an odd child, especially
in upper-middle class Connecticut. It seems Nancy Lanza did have a
basic misapprehension of her son. If she didn't she would have known it
was inappropriate to have such efficient weapons in the house.

I think the kind of cultural change that would be needed to identify cases
like Adam Lanza would, in general, be considered too intrusive and
rejected by most Americans. It would involve, I expect, that
apparently introverted kids would receive psychological assessments, and
that those assessments, would need to be actionable without parental
consent. Like most school assessments, they would discourage any
subtle judgement by the fraction of teachers capable of the task.

Marcus

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Leigh Fanning

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

This is a country producing substandard students unable to compete
intellectually with their peers, with school budgets a perennial
mess. It's also a country that primarily serves compliant,
malleable girls in the school systems. Problem boys are fast-tracked
to deficit drugs rather than creating educational systems that
actually work for them. It's unlikely that the schools could
handle filtering for future mass murderers given that they can't
even manage their primary mission.

It seems the entire surrounding group was out of touch. Was the father
so removed that he spent no time with his son and simply paid
off the mother to make a problem go away so he could continue his
wealthy much better than yours life? Are we really to believe that
he had no knowledge of his son's activities?

Who are we to judge these people anyway? We should be judging
ourselves that we have allowed such disconnected social systems
to become commonplace, and feel that we bear no responsibility
to each other or towards the communities we live in.

Leigh

On 18 Dec 2012 at 12:38 AM, Marcus G. Daniels related

> Hi,
>
> When it comes to gun control and parents, does the government try to
> cross-examine parents seeking purchase of weapons to be sure their
> remarks about their children are sufficiently detached and analytical?
> Do we expect parents to know the inner lives of their introverted
> children, and even adult children? The hopes by and expectations of
> parents seem counter to an honest assessment of an odd child, especially
> in upper-middle class Connecticut. It seems Nancy Lanza did have a
> basic misapprehension of her son. If she didn't she would have known
> it was inappropriate to have such efficient weapons in the house.
>
> I think the kind of cultural change that would be needed to identify
> cases like Adam Lanza would, in general, be considered too intrusive and
> rejected by most Americans. It would involve, I expect, that
> apparently introverted kids would receive psychological assessments, and
> that those assessments, would need to be actionable without parental
> consent. Like most school assessments, they would discourage any
> subtle judgement by the fraction of teachers capable of the task.
>
> Marcus
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Douglas Roberts-2

Re: How to avoid shootings

"We have met the Enemy, and he is us." - Pogo

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Leigh Fanning <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is a country producing substandard students unable to compete
intellectually with their peers, with school budgets a perennial
mess. It's also a country that primarily serves compliant,
malleable girls in the school systems. Problem boys are fast-tracked
to deficit drugs rather than creating educational systems that
actually work for them. It's unlikely that the schools could
handle filtering for future mass murderers given that they can't
even manage their primary mission.

It seems the entire surrounding group was out of touch. Was the father
so removed that he spent no time with his son and simply paid
off the mother to make a problem go away so he could continue his
wealthy much better than yours life? Are we really to believe that
he had no knowledge of his son's activities?

Who are we to judge these people anyway? We should be judging
ourselves that we have allowed such disconnected social systems
to become commonplace, and feel that we bear no responsibility
to each other or towards the communities we live in.

Leigh

On 18 Dec 2012 at 12:38 AM, Marcus G. Daniels related

> Hi,
>
> When it comes to gun control and parents, does the government try to
> cross-examine parents seeking purchase of weapons to be sure their
> remarks about their children are sufficiently detached and analytical?
> Do we expect parents to know the inner lives of their introverted
> children, and even adult children? The hopes by and expectations of
> parents seem counter to an honest assessment of an odd child, especially
> in upper-middle class Connecticut. It seems Nancy Lanza did have a
> basic misapprehension of her son. If she didn't she would have known
> it was inappropriate to have such efficient weapons in the house.
>
> I think the kind of cultural change that would be needed to identify
> cases like Adam Lanza would, in general, be considered too intrusive and
> rejected by most Americans. It would involve, I expect, that
> apparently introverted kids would receive psychological assessments, and
> that those assessments, would need to be actionable without parental
> consent. Like most school assessments, they would discourage any
> subtle judgement by the fraction of teachers capable of the task.
>
> Marcus
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-672-8213 - Mobile

Nick Thompson

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Dear Lee and Marcus,

I am afraid I fell for a Liberal meme. It may, of course, be true, but at
least so far as I can determine from a quick scan of the web, there is no
consensus on the causality that I implied.

So, at the moment, I guess it just comes down to values. I hate the damned
things.

My apologies.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2012 11:01 AM
To: Nicholas Thompson; [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How to avoid shootings

Nick:

> So, Marcus. You would make no changes in things as they are? Note
> that both Australia and Scotland have made changes in gun deaths recently
by making
> changes in gun laws. N

How do you know that? In both places, I believe that (1) the background
level of non-massacre gun murders (not suicides nor
accidents) was low(ish) and remains low(ish), and that (2) the gun massacre
which prompted the change in gun laws was unprecedented--so that, again, the
"background level" (if it makes sense to talk about that when it's zero) was
low (as could be) and remains low (as could be). Maybe the two massacres
would have, without the new gun laws, been followed by more; maybe not. How
*could* you know that (not to go all epistemological on you)?

My claims about background levels are, of course, just what I think I've
read; I could be wrong, misinformed, or forgetful. All three happen,
occasionally.

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Steve Smith

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2

Hear hear!

To all both of Marcus' and Leigh's comments and to Doug's quote from the most insightful cartoon philosopher of all!

Leigh -

As a (mostly) single father of two (now grown) daughters, I am very sympathetic with the (more common) single mothers who have had the burden (and privilege) of raising children without the benefit of the "help" of the other parent. In my case, and many cases I am personally familiar with for women raising children alone, the absence of the other parent can be a blessing, albeit mixed (psychologically as well as financially).

Nevertheless. I agree that this does not absolve the absent parent nor the "village" of the responsibilities of raising a child. As you point out, we are already failing at that fairly badly *even* when the kids manage to not become mass murderers.

I am trying to use the acuteness of this event to return my gaze to my own immediate surroundings... my relationship with gun and violence culture, my relationship with the young people in my life and their parents, etc. I don't see any budding mass murderers, but then... I'm not sure they are that easy to spot except from the armchair on the day after the game with our most excellent rearview binoculars.

- Steve

"We have met the Enemy, and he is us." - Pogo

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Leigh Fanning <[hidden email]> wrote:

This is a country producing substandard students unable to compete
intellectually with their peers, with school budgets a perennial
mess. It's also a country that primarily serves compliant,
malleable girls in the school systems. Problem boys are fast-tracked
to deficit drugs rather than creating educational systems that
actually work for them. It's unlikely that the schools could
handle filtering for future mass murderers given that they can't
even manage their primary mission.

It seems the entire surrounding group was out of touch. Was the father
so removed that he spent no time with his son and simply paid
off the mother to make a problem go away so he could continue his
wealthy much better than yours life? Are we really to believe that
he had no knowledge of his son's activities?

Who are we to judge these people anyway? We should be judging
ourselves that we have allowed such disconnected social systems
to become commonplace, and feel that we bear no responsibility
to each other or towards the communities we live in.

Leigh

On 18 Dec 2012 at 12:38 AM, Marcus G. Daniels related

> Hi,
>
> When it comes to gun control and parents, does the government try to
> cross-examine parents seeking purchase of weapons to be sure their
> remarks about their children are sufficiently detached and analytical?
> Do we expect parents to know the inner lives of their introverted
> children, and even adult children? The hopes by and expectations of
> parents seem counter to an honest assessment of an odd child, especially
> in upper-middle class Connecticut. It seems Nancy Lanza did have a
> basic misapprehension of her son. If she didn't she would have known
> it was inappropriate to have such efficient weapons in the house.
>
> I think the kind of cultural change that would be needed to identify
> cases like Adam Lanza would, in general, be considered too intrusive and
> rejected by most Americans. It would involve, I expect, that
> apparently introverted kids would receive psychological assessments, and
> that those assessments, would need to be actionable without parental
> consent. Like most school assessments, they would discourage any
> subtle judgement by the fraction of teachers capable of the task.
>
> Marcus
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-672-8213 - Mobile
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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lrudolph-2

Re: How to avoid shootings

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

> Dear Lee and Marcus,
>
> I am afraid I fell for a Liberal meme. It may, of course, be true, but at
> least so far as I can determine from a quick scan of the web, there is no
> consensus on the causality that I implied.
>
> So, at the moment, I guess it just comes down to values. I hate the damned
> things.

Oh, you're not alone--I hate values too!

...I also am perfectly willing to ban as many guns as possible. My
father, who won medals for the US Marine Corps on its sharpshooting
team in the 1920s and 1930s and used those skills lethally as a
horse Marine during the Second Nicaraguan Campaign, got rid of all
his guns when I was born. I am sure that if he hadn't, at some
point one of us would have shot the other dead.

I just wanted to keep you honest, flow-of-causation-wise.

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123