"Just How Dangerous Is Police Work?"

More details/stats at the link.

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > Just How Dangerous Is Police Work?:

"So just how dangerous is police work? Generally, police are about three times as likely to be killed on the job as the average American. It isn't among the top ten most dangerous professions, falling well behind logging, fishing, driving a cab, trash collecting, farming, and truck driving. Moreover, about half of police killed on the job are killed in traffic accidents, and most of those are not while in pursuit of a criminal or rushing to the scene of a crime. I don't point this out to diminish the tragedy of those cops killed in routine traffic accidents. My point is that the number of annual on-the-job police fatalities doesn't justify giving cops bigger guns, military equipment, and allowing them to use more aggressive and increasingly militaristic tactics. A military-issue weapon isn't going to prevent traffic accidents. In this context, then, it makes sense to remove from consideration deaths not directly attributable to the bad guys.

So take out traffic accidents and other non-violent deaths, and you're left with 69 officers killed on the job by criminals last year. That's out of about 850,000 officers nationwide. That breaks down to about 8 deaths per 100,000 officers, or less than twice the national average of on-the-job fatalities.

...Twice the national average means police work certainly carries added risk. But is it the kind of risk that justifies, for example, a more than 1,000 percent increase in the use of SWAT teams over the last 25 years? Does it justify the fact that our cops that once looked like this



now look like this?



Your call, I guess."

On New Year's Eve, I'm staying home to watch large men beat the hell outta each other.

Including Fedor V Hong Man Choi.



God bless free fights on Japanese TV.

I am 99% sure...

...that this is the toy bike I had when I was a kid.

Sadly, one day I left it in the driveway and my dad backed over it. Driveways were for playing in, not cars! Such is the mind of the young.

Just crunched the damn thing.

Sigh... That's okay. Makes ya tough, it does.

God, I love Sinfest.

See, I said "God." It's kind of a pun, yes? Oh my, I've been hanging around Sandy too much.

Sinfest.

Mmmm - Sacrilicious!

Overheard in the Office | Sacrilicious! - Quote this entry!: " 9AM Sacrilicious!

Tech, watching movie trailer online: Man, that's delicious. It's like drinking Jesus's sperm.

Hyde Park
Austin, Texas

via Overheard in the Office, Dec 28, 2007"

God damn, the man can still write.

Dennis O'Neil, author and comic book scribe, gives you his holiday parable.

Little Ditty About Danny and Fred, by Dennis O'Neil at ComicMix:

"Danny and Fred were the last two kids in their grade to still believe in Santa Claus.

Danny had first believed in Daddy, but he stopped when Daddy began to yell a lot, and drink whiskey, and throw things. So Danny could believe he had a father, because he could see a man coming and going, but he stopped believing in Daddy.

But he still believed in Santa Claus. Santa Claus would never yell or throw things or drink whiskey, and besides, he brought presents and all Danny had to do was be good, which he was anyway. Fred, who lived next door, also believed in Santa, though he and Danny never discussed the etiology of it, so Danny didn’t know why Fred believed. He didn’t care, either.

Then, when Danny was fourteen, Father, who was once Daddy, came into Danny’s room on Christmas Eve and pulled Danny from bed and hustled him into the front room, where the Christmas tree was. Father sat Danny down on the sofa and got a big cardboard box from a closet.

"Look, you little freak,” he said, not merrily, taking gifts from the box and throwing them at the tree. “It’s me. There is no Santa Claus. Me – I buy the friggin' gifts and I put them under the tree. Me, you little fruitcake.”

When Danny told Fred about this incident, Fred said that obviously, and for reasons of his own, Santa had disguised himself as Danny’s father. Which pretty much ended the conversation and the friendship.

But Danny still had things to believe in. He could believe in the Lord, and he did until he really, really liked this girl, Louella, and planned to ask her to be his bride. He prayed and prayed and prayed that Louella would say, “Yes”, but she didn’t. She said, “I really, really like you as a friend, but I plan to marry Horace.”

It was hard to believe in the Lord after that, and eventually Danny stopped trying. But he could still believe in his Country and his President and he did until his President told a bunch of lies and, to make the situation even worse, his Vice President told a bunch more. Finally, Danny just stopped believing, period. This made Danny sad, but that was life.

Fred still believed in Daddy, Santa, the Lord, and his Country right or wrong. Fred was a happy guy."

Very little new under the sun.

Why is it actually less comforting to know that the Bush administration has predecessors? You know, in the whole douchebaggery trashing of the Constitution sense...

Declassified doc shows Hoover planned mass jailing in 1950 - Boing Boing:

"The NYT reports today of a recently declassified document which reveals that longtime FBI head J. Edgar Hoover once planned to suspend habeas corpus in the US, and imprison 12,000 citizens he suspected of being disloyal."

Well played, indeed.

Questionable Content

Kid's got a future.

Hope he uses his powers for good, not evil.

Kid uses mousetrap to catch money-thief - Boing Boing:

"Harry Cordaiy, an 11-year-old Australian boy, was tired of thieves stealing his and other students' lunch money and bus tickets from classrooms. The school administrators weren't doing anything about it, so he rigged up a mousetrap coated with green food coloring, attached a $5 bill to it, stashed it in his backpack, and waited...

"I thought 'Oh my God, I might catch these guys'," Harry said. "Everybody was running around seeing who had green on their fingers."

One of the offenders was caught green-handed en route to the bathroom in a desperate bid to wash off the evidence. The younger boy confessed his guilt. An accomplice in the same year was also nabbed."

Priest Fight!

Just too awesome.

It's almost as if religion is designed to cause conflict and strife. Show me some more of that Jesus love, you Christian nutjobs.

Priests brawl at Jesus' birthplace - Boing Boing:

"At a Bethlehem church built over the manger where Jesus was alleged to have been born, two groups of 'robed and bearded' Greek Orthodox priests and Armenian priests fought each other for over an hour 'using fists, brooms and iron rods as weapons.' Seven people were injured in the brawl."

Pic Via.

Talking sense.

11AM You Know, Killing All Those Spades

Boss, holding meeting: So, you want to handle this thing?
Female employee: No.
Boss: What's the matter? You can't handle Harlem at night?
Female employee: No.
Boss: Faggot.
Queer employee: I'm surprised you used that word.
Boss: What? 'Faggot'?
Queer employee: Yes.
Boss: Obviously I don't think she's gay. I said 'faggot' in the sense of, you know, a sissy. No guts.
Drama queen employee: Besides, you faggots call each other 'faggot' all the time. I know you do.
Queer employee: I guess.
Boss: Glad we settled that. [To female employee] Now... I expect you to take your sissy ass to Harlem and take care of this thing.

Law firm
Long Island, New York

Overheard by: Big Larry

via Overheard in the Office, Dec 28, 2007

Typhoon Cindi II - The Reckoning.

To all those who shall hear these presents... Greeting.

Not 10 minutes... 10 minutes... and Cindi attacks my manhood. Just a joke, of course. [Hi mom, hi dad!] Which of course demanded my responsonating interrogatively-like whether she would die alone.

[First blood was Cindi's, so whatever tears result, it's important to note that.]

Now she and Sandy are chattering about.

Gonna be an interesting [and loud} week.

Not really all that different...

That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.—Paul Valery

Back from China.

Back once more into the land of the Rising Sun. 6 days and 3 cities in China, land of... umm... smog and air pollution?

Anyways, good trip, though I don't think I'd do it again.

In brief... Peking Duck, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, Terracotta Soldiers, Hot Springs, the beginning of the Silk Road, Museums, Parks, the Shanghai Circus and far too many shops and peddlers. Oh, and two cases of food poisoning.

Anyways, still playing catch up with events and pics on the blog from before our trip, so the next few days should be getting those uploaded plus getting all the China pics on the computer and then blogging 'em.

Plus, Typhoon Cindi is in town and there's a UFC this weekend. Thank god I've got next week off. Priorities, people.