I don’t like Mondays?

Posted by on April 16, 2007; This entry is filed under Uncategorized.
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Everybody okay?

7 Comments

  1. dearieme April 16th, 2007 at 3:28 pm

    Another beautiful summer’s day in the south of England, thank you.

  2. Matt McIntosh April 16th, 2007 at 3:34 pm

    Lame weather, kinda tired, unremarkable day at work, but okay.

  3. keil April 16th, 2007 at 4:46 pm

    College shooting kinda bummed me out. (see CNN)

  4. G April 16th, 2007 at 5:23 pm

    Makes me glad that my professor/husband is home safe. Usually my only worry is co-eds batting their eyes at him to get a higher grade, not that he could be shot. Horrible. He’s been told to duck and cover.

  5. rikurzhen April 16th, 2007 at 6:39 pm

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Ann_Spencer

  6. Dennis April 16th, 2007 at 8:10 pm

    I find myself appalled at two things; how commonplace this peculiarly American phenomenon has become and the realization that the habit of ranking them promises to fuel a perverse competition in the future. We were a few days from the anniversary of Columbine, previously the worst such incident in terms of number of deaths. 
    I found this interesting, from the Stiftung Leo Strauss of the Stop the Spirit of Zossen blog, quoting Katherine Newman’s ?Rampage: The Social Roots Of School Shootings? on the conditions necessary for a school shooter: 
     
    From these premises Newman forwards five necessary conditions for rampages. First, the shooter must see himself as marginal to his immediate social worlds, and as having lowly status in peer hierarchies. Some were victims of bullying and ridicule, but often they simply felt socially isolated, resentful, and desperate. Second, they suffer from a host of individual vulnerabilities that magnify the impact of this marginality, i.e. shooters’ deteriorating mental states worsened their sense of isolation and paranoia. Rather than being impulsive or suddenly erratic, the shooters’ great common fault was to ruminate and obsess over their social difficulties. Most had at least once attempted suicide. Third, all shooters had access to ‘cultural scripts’ that glorify armed attack. By venerating social blueprints that connect manhood to violence, guns, domination, and the thrill of terrifying the innocent, would-be shooters understood that outward aggression would somehow reinstate their status. In their own minds, these scripts offered a ‘masculine exit’ from social subordination. 
     
    Fourth, local surveillance systems failed to provide warnings. Most shooters were doing moderately well in school, and most lacked extensive histories of criminality. Yet, Newman argued that enough warning signs were present in each case. Shooters usually uttered threats leading to their rampages, but were not heard beyond their peers, or were ignored by adults. These would-be killers thus fell under the radar screen of adult networks. Due to a lack of official coordination between schools, law enforcement, and mental health agencies, no one individual had access to all the relevant information that would allow them to piece together the many warning signals that existed across the disparate spheres of school, family, or neighbourhood. Finally, each shooter had access to guns, the plentiful availability of guns in rural areas made them easily accessible to troubled youth.

  7. Avondlander April 17th, 2007 at 5:39 am

    Here in Europe journalists and other experts have a straightforward explanation for the schoolshootings in the US: the right to own arms. Of course I believe all what these experts tell us. But then i have to conclude that the right to own arms in the US is limited to males. Is this really so? ;-0 
    (BTW the big schoolshootings in Europe are always a little bit forgotten by our experts…)

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