Category Archives: Adhesive

Crime statistics a map, not a compass

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This discussion has legs.

Personally, I think that gun ownership is stupid. Guns don’t stop crime and all it takes is looking at other countries with strict gun laws to see what the result is.

You not wish to own a gun. That’s fine. I am a gun owner. Calling gun ownership stupid is a personal affront to all gun owners. Luckily for you, dueling is out of fashion.

It is fashionable to rest an argument entirely on favorable statistical analysis. This trend signals bad times for individualism. To rely solely on aggregated data for governance is to settle on “the greatest good for the greatest number” with the added delusion that causes are known. If anything can be decided from crime statistics it is the question of where one can feel safe without firearms.

Both sides find studies to back up their case. Both sides fund studies to back up their case. In deciding whether to own a gun, I have as much interest in crime statistics as the founders did. They were ready to kill for their beliefs. They understood that when your time comes, statistics are no more vital than table manners.

I don’t care about gun statistics because I am not fundamentally invested in preserving every human life. I am interested in preserving some and I believe that I would use lethal force to do so. Lethal force comes in many varieties. A person who would take away my right to choose a gun is not sensible to me. Such a person is antagonistic to my instinct and to my reason.

We don’t only disagree about gun rights. Heavier things are moved beneath the surface. The underlying disagreement may be somewhere in these statements:

  • I do not value all lives equally.
  • Some things are worth killing for.
  • I would rather kill than be killed.
  • I would rather kill than let a loved one be killed.
  • Individuals are typically good judges of their own circumstances.
  • A collective of toothless individuals is worse than a toothless collective.

Pull out your own teeth but leave me mine. They might help you some day.

To a stranger

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Hi. I’m Andy Skelton. Nobody special. I’d like to learn your name and get to know you and I’ll tell you why right now.

It’s often said that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. I just now realized that I have always arrogantly believed my intuition about people based on a mere first impression, a momentary experience that will be tainted by microsecond subconscious attempts to match you with others from my memories.

You haven’t ever spoken to me or met me but I have heard you and seen you. You made an impression. Everything you did, your look, your words, and your tone reminded me of people I have known who were complete assholes. Thus my intuition was that you were a complete asshole.

Wait. Let me back up a little. Those people might not have been assholes in their lives, but they were assholes in my life. Some of them became assholes over time and some became some of the best people in my life. First impressions are not permanent.

See, what’s happening for me right now is that I’m becoming less of an asshole myself because I am giving us another chance to see eye to eye. I reviewed my entire experience of you and I see now that there is room for doubt. For all I know, you could be the nicest person in the world.

That’s why I want to know you. Take my card. If you don’t want to talk to me right now, talk to me when you do. I’ve invaded your time and space enough. Please just tell me your name.

One Year Without Things I’d Rather Not Like

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I had an idea for a New Year’s Resolution. This idea came while I was eating one of my favorite Ben & Jerry’s ice creams, Phish Food. It had been half a year since my last B&J fix (a longer-than-customary interval for me, also being a product of Vermont) and I found it less satisfying this time.

Chips and Soda

I also used to have a fondness for chips and soda but a few years of scant consumption cured that. It should be admitted here that my first successful tactic against consuming junk food was a holier-than-thou attitude. I quickly saw how such an attitude can become itself addictive and found new, entertaining ways to reject some of my baser attractions.

To wit, and to be witty, I took to describing the chip-chomping experience this way: once you’ve eaten a chip, the pleasant flavor and crunch are replaced by an awful aftertaste that can only be defeated by the most thorough oral cleansing or, more handily, swigging soda and chomping another chip—it’s a downward spiral that ends when you’ve up-ended the bag for crumbs and sucked the soda dry and finally resigned yourself to tasting your garbage-flavored mouth until you can find a toothbrush.

In 2008 I will use the New Year’s Resolution tradition to test the proverb “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. By trick or by treat, I will avoid each item on a privately kept (and by no means final) list of Things I’d Rather Not Like. At the end of the year, I will be free to indulge any desires which might remain. Results will be posted in 2009.