Today this (local) news had me feeling down and really creeped out. The Free Press has three or four pages of gory details.*
But this news, from Science, is more cheerful:
"The ethical problems of using eggs can be circumvented with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are adult cells reprogrammed to behave like embryonic stem cells. In 2006, scientists created such cells from mice and rats by introducing a combination of four genes to a culture of skin cells. Then last year, scientists showed that they could do the same thing with human cells. The new study, published online today by Science, shows that iPS cells can be successfully generated even from the skin cells of an elderly, sick person, Eggan says."
Hurray for progress in science! Especially progress that solves ethical problems rather than creating new ones.
And Boo to unprovoked homicides / decapitations by cannibal psychotics off their meds.
*They even had a story about worldwide reactions. Best were the quotes from boorish Americans informing us that Canadians were wimps, blaming the tragedy on handgun control, or explaining that this was clearly an al-Qaeda terrorist attack aimed at the USA. (Oh, just like fist bumps or reporters?) There are good rebuttals to such allegations, but it's more fun to reply in the same spirit they were made: No, your MOM is clearly a wimpy handgun controlling al-Qaeda attack aimed at the USA!!
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6 comments:
I was a bit exasperated by the blogospheric discussion of the bus murder too, where many of the same sentiments were voiced. Now, I support concealed carry weapons, think too few people know self-defense, and plan to buy a firearm within the next year, yet have no patience with those who would use this incident as grist for ideological mills on these topics. It's all too easy to spout off about what "should" have been done while leisurely sitting at your computer and knowing only the vaguest details about what happened. It's not as if nobody on the bus did anything -- they forcibly kept the guy onboard, after all.
I think reactions like this are often due to the tendency of news items to present themselves in our minds more as abstractions than as truly real events. They exist in a half-reality that promotes slotting them into our ideas without much serious engagement.
Good point! It's like everything has become a talking point for use in some blogger's ideological crusade.
From the reading over the blow-by-blow accounts of passengers it sounds like it happened very quickly. There was an ex-soldier on board who, along with the driver and a trucker, tried to do something, but it seems like getting everyone else to safety and barricading him in was the wisest choice.
Besides, if there were more handguns floating around Canada, then presumably the psychotic dude would have been more likely to have one. People had very little warning as it was - if he'd started shooting he could've killed many more than one. We don't have nearly as many shooting rampages here. And so what if someone else was carrying? They're going to start blazing away on a crowded bus? Come on. Reports indicate the guy was completely out of it and would not have just surrendered at gunpoint. So, MAYBE a gun would've helped, but more likely it would've just made everything messier. It seems to me that many Americans have a unrealistic view of handguns as a magic problem-solver, based on watching too many TV shows.
I agree that people should know more self-defense! (Stories like this are one reason I take karate.) And I can imagine a few (but only a few) situations where handguns would be a good thing.
This, while gruesome and horrible, was a one in a billion kind of occurrence.
I'm more concerned with stories like this:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2008/08/05/simcoe-shooting.html#socialcomments
:(
It seems to me that many Americans have a unrealistic view of handguns as a magic problem-solver...
I think it's more a symptom of simply being an urbanite. Other than a few professionals and criminals, how many people living in cities ever see a gun, let alone handle one? Movies and TV are pretty much the sole sources of information on firearms for most people. (And a whole lot of other things, too!)
Don't know about where Bernhardt lives, but around here, in the mountains of North Carolina, I can assure you the almost everyone has a gun! My barber has a proud picture of his 10 year old holding his rifle and the dead bobcat he shot with it.
My wife was amazed when we first moved here how many news reports went something like this: "Annie Mae Fields, 68, was attacked by a rabid raccoon today. She held it off with her foot while she reached into her pickup for her gun and then shot the beast." [except for the name, I am not making this up]
As for self defense? I think your chances are a lot better for getting shot by someone you know with your own gun. And look at the lunatic last week who walked into a Unitarian Church with a shotgun and started firing. He clearly intended to kill as many Unitarians as possible - which could have been horrific since the church was filled with children. One heroic man managed to stop him at the cost of his life, but it didn't have anything to do with having a gun.
Clemens, the mountains of North Carolina are not exactly "urbanite". ;-)
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