I always tell my son that I'm working to change gun control laws so that expected number of casualties in a situation like this will be a handful of children instead of dozens. I hope he appreciates the better odds.
Ugh. This is one sad/scary bit of parenting I haven't had to deal with yet. One of the benefits of the kid still being a toddler.
Whenever gun violence is in the news, I keep coming back to the fact that mass shootings are a tiny fraction of the total number of murders. America is a violent country in general. Legislation aimed at reducing mass shootings might be effective against mass shootings while having no noticeable impact on the overall murder rate because there are so many. I can't think of any good way to explain that to a four-year-old, though.
It's pretty easy to lie them to that age.
The Calabat last week must have heard something, because he had a lot of questions about what Mommy would do if there was a bad guy with a gun, and whether I'd punch the bad guy really hard and then cut his head off. Four-year-olds are vicious.
Around here, however, it's not crazy to think that his preschool will wind up having to permit open carry. (It already has to permit concealed carry. Because the only thing you really need to make preschool more fun and education are teachers with loaded weapons and minimal shall-issue training.)
The "active intruder" preparedness drills will be just as effective as the nuclear war preparedness drills I had in fourth grade. Which is to say, 100% effective, or so close it hardly matters. No one in my school died in a nuclear war, and it's pretty certain that no one in my son's school, or any of your kids' schools (unless this post goes viral and is read by every American parent) will experience a school shooting.
If someone tried to wear hijab or a kippah at the kid's school that person would be ejected forthwith until all overt non-Christian sectarian identifiers removed, while crosses pass without comment. Would be an uncomfortable sitch, to say the least. But I've never had to worry the school would tolerate anyone being armed.
"Mass shootings make the news, but really, they account for something like 2 percent of all murders. And of all murders, something like three-quarters are committed by someone known to the victim. An abusive family member, a drug deal gone bad, neighbors fighting and it gets violent, things like that. So, really, don't worry about a mass shooting. You're much more likely to be killed by me than... never mind."
We had school shootings at my school, but not mass shootings (a 3rd grader(?) shot a secretary with a BB gun one year, IIRC), and we had stranger in the building drills. They involved 5 bells going off and then the teacher would lock the door, turn off the lights, and we'd all go hide in the coat closets. Of course, since we were an "urban" school no one really cared about our gun violence on the national stage, and it was presumed the shooting would be related to gang retaliation or a kid who got his/her hands on an older relative's gun, not an antisocial misogynist white male with an entitlement complex.
8 - there was at least one (that I can remember) incident at my elementary school where some kid brought a gun to campus and shot it, not at anyone or doing any harm to anything other than the playground; it was similarly seen as an urban crime thing not a mass murder thing. Obviously the kid was not white.
Also there was a kid who was shot at by terrorists outside of the school, but it was the Turkish consulate's kid being shot at by Armenian nationalist terrorists. I don't believe it got any more coverage than maybe somewhere on the back pages of the LA Times metro section. No one actually hurt.
AFAIK none of my kids have had any similar incidents in their schools; in one of them the security is intense enough that it's got to be one of the safer places in the city.
There was a kid at my elementary school who brought a knife from home and pulled it on a teacher when she asked him to do something he didn't want to do. He got expelled for that, which was a problem because he'd already been expelled from the other school in town. I tried to google him after the latest shooting, but got no hits.
10
In middle school, we had a kid expelled twice, in 6th grade for sexually molesting another student and in 7th grade for slapping a teacher. He went to a neighboring middle school for 8th grade, where he got arrested for bringing a gun to school. I'm not sure what happened to him after that. I do remember thinking even in 6th grade he seemed like a sociopath.
I don't think this kid was a sociopath, at least not by birth. I think, based on hints from people who would have reasons to know and legal reasons to not be able to say, that he was horribly abused at home.
What does America have going for it these days over other places? Serious question.
Best, cheap snack food in the world if you aren't worried about death or debility.
The school shootings all make the news over here, not front page but they'd definitely all be on the evening radio or tv news etc. So I'm not at all surprised that Harkaway's kid had heard about them.
My school probably had more guns per head than most; 50 assault rifles and about 20 target rifles. But they were obviously kept locked away safely in the armoury when not in use.
What does America have going for it these days over other places?
I have a version of this thought lately. As an immigrant with some means/choice, where would go these days? It seems unlikely that the US is the best choice for most people.
Because the only thing you really need to make preschool more fun and education are teachers with loaded weapons and minimal shall-issue training.
This reminds me how angry my dad was when he learned (several years after the fact) that the leader of my brother's scout troop had always brought a gun with him on their trips.
16: I imagine that a big factor is language immigration laws, the details of which will vary depending on the person. I mean, being unable to communicate in the local language is a big problem, and you might get preferential treatment in one country but not another based on family connections, career, etc. All things being equal I'd say most parts of Western Europe or the Anglosphere not including America come ahead of America itself.
America still is the place to go though, according to this great TNR piece. Which suggests the place to go was Brazil before their economy crashed. Now it's America again. Or actually it's Canada, but you have to go through America to get there, so might as well take your chances in America.
I'm like ajay. We shot .22 rifles on a range at my prep school, so I will have been 11 or 12. It was less fun than I had hoped, but still a lot more fun than not shooting at all.
At the next place I attended there were serious rifles for members of the cadet force but I was thrown out/removed before I could get my hands on them, which is probably just as well.
In high school, we used to drink beer, throw the cans in the river, and shoot them as they floated away.
All things being equal I'd say most parts of Western Europe or the Anglosphere not including America come ahead of America itself.
Unfortunately the rest of the Anglosphere is effectively walled off by ocean or you have to go through America to get to it anyway.
I think ajay was shooting 20mm Oerlikon canons when he was 12 so I don't think you were anything like him.
24: 13 and a half, but well remembered. (Standing on a box in order to reach the controls.)
14 is a risible misrepresentation of reality in the face of, inter alia, tacos & chaat.
18 - bienvenue à la laïcité!
Tacos are an entree (in the American sense of "main course").
Snack food, in the Pennsylvanian sense, comes in a sealed bag and is eaten at room temperature. Tacos are better, but require actual preparation.
When the eater is ready, the taco will appear.
My school district had no school shootings or nuclear wars, but when I was in fourth grade four kids in our town, and their mother and grandmother, were murdered in their home by their father/husband/son. I didn't know them. Some of my friends knew the family from church, where dad had taught Sunday school.
Dad had told the school district and the church that he was taking the family on a month long vacation, so he had a good head start. He was caught 20 years later, after being featured in one of the first episodes of America's Most Wanted.
A kid here recently brought a bullet to middle school and accidentally discharged it with a rock. Maybe intentionally.
A kid at my high school was shot by a friend when they were playing around at one of their homes with what they thought was an unloaded gun. There was a school-wide assembly that was both a memorial and an information session on gun safety. Never having touched a gun myself, it's where I learned that some guns will load a bullet in the chamber so you have to check if you're trying to unload it properly.* I already knew the part about not pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger if you don't mean to shoot them.
*Or however a gun owner would describe the process.
. . . And Wikipedia has some great details, some involving the high school:
On November 9, 1971, List methodically murdered his entire immediate family, using his own 9mm Steyr 1912 semi-automatic handgun[8] and his father's Colt .22 caliber revolver.[9] While his children were at school he shot his wife Helen, 46, in the back of the head, and then his mother Alma, 84, above the left eye. As his daughter Patricia, 16, and younger son Frederick, 13, arrived home from school, he shot each of them in the back of the head. After making himself lunch, List drove to his bank to close his own and his mother's bank accounts, and then to Westfield High School to watch his elder son John Jr., 15, play in a soccer game. He drove the boy home, then shot him repeatedly in the chest and face.[10][11]
List placed the bodies of his wife and children on sleeping bags in the mansion's ballroom. He left his mother's body in her apartment in the attic. In a five-page letter to his pastor, found on the desk in his study, he wrote that he saw too much evil in the world, and he had killed his family to save their souls. He then cleaned the various crime scenes, carefully cut his own picture out of every family photograph in the house, tuned a radio to a religious station, and departed.[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_List
Apparently only three kids. But he was a model for Keyser Soze and was played in a movie by Robert Blake.
America's Most Wanted used the most photogenic church in town as a backdrop, not the small decrepit one where he actually had taught Sunday School.
You know conventional wisdom, "gun owners are single issue voters, but gun controllers aren't" - I wouldn't be surprised if that starts to be untrue. That a politician who goes on record as being against regulation will now lose votes for that single position.
We also had a spree killer story in my town growing up. Look up George Banks, who I think has never been portrayed in a TV movie or otherwise. But it's quite a story.
Like List, it was reported that he was motivated by delusional religious/political beliefs leading him to believe his victims would be better off dead. It seems like there's not many spree killers like that anymore, it's all guys trying to get revenge for being losers or trying to start a race war.
9: Didn't someone threaten to shoot up your alma mater just a couple days ago?
More of an ambiguous "let's caption this instagram picture of assault rifles with hashtag specfic name of school hashtag former classmates hashtag bullying," than a clear threat, but yes.
It seems like almost every school in the country has had threats like that since the Parkland thing. It's not clear why.
For the lulz, teo. You know, triggering the snowflakes. Kek, etc.
Why this time rather than after other recent shootings, though? Or does this happen every time and authorities are just paying more attention?
Like List, it was reported that he was motivated by delusional religious/political beliefs leading him to believe his victims would be better off dead.
People go through all kinds of absurdities when they could just use science.
You're tripping my suicide-risk alarms, brah.
Sorry. I should pass on some straight lines.
We also had a spree killer story in my town growing up. Look up George Banks, who I think has never been portrayed in a TV movie or otherwise. But it's quite a story.
We had serial killer Danny Rolling when I was in middle school. Super super gruesome dismemberments of five college students. My friend's dad was the judge in the case.
Why this time rather than after other recent shootings, though?
I think because the Parkland students are breaking so many norms.
They had some kind of active intruder training in my department that I missed. I wouldn't have minded going. I don't think it's primarily about shooters, but working in a hospital, there are a fair number of angry, aggressive people.
On the subject of killing, this seems like something a lot of us reprobates would enjoy reading: a detailed book on the Lord Lucan case, on sale in electronic form for 99 cents.
The most notorious British spree shooting (Dunblane) took place not far from where I grew up. 12 miles maybe. Kids I went to school with used to work at the Hydro for summer jobs. So I knew people who knew people who were directly affected, but not anyone close. Connections in the way that people who live in small countries generally do have those connections. My then girlfriend was training to be a school teacher, and one of her classmates had a cousin who died there. My Dad went to folk music events with people who parents at that school, and was an ambulance driver at the station that responded (although he wasn't working at the time).
There has been one mass shooting in the UK in the 22 years since.
Knives _were_ occasionally a thing. But, considering I grew up somewhere where fighting was an ever present thing, it was mostly just direct physical violence, without blades. Although I remember a friend who 'forgot'* to pay some hard cases from a nearby former mining village for some drugs he had on commission. And they sent a junkie with a machete after him.**
* he was trying to rip them off, without actually acknowledging to anyone he was ripping them off.
** he paid up. No-one got chopped.
The only think that can stop a bad guy with a junkie with a machete is a good guy with a junkie with a machete.
What about a bad guy with a junkie with a gorilla?
See if he'll trade you the gorilla for a machete.
I had neither shootings nor stabbings nor nukings, but did hear of a dude very casually sharpening a screwdriver.
While trying to repair a lawnmower, the father of a classmate put a screwdriver through his own hand.
The truth about the Second Amendment is that the Founding Fathers knew Americans were just way too clumsy for edged weapons.
I know two people who shot themselves in the foot, accidentally. They were both 16 or so at the time.
I did have the one amusingly stupid HS teacher who fired a .22 rifle into a cabinet at the back of the workshop. He very responsibly made sure that everyone was standing behind him first.
On my campus, most of the profs don't have keys to the rooms we teach in, so there's no way to lock the door. That bothers me every time there's a school shooting and I have to think about it.
13/16 are really good questions that I think about sometimes and seem worth not dropping.
If I was an immigrant with some means/choice, I think right now clearly Canada is preferable to the US. I still think both Canada and the US are preferable to the Northern European Welfare States as an immigrant, though I don't say this with a great degree of confidence -- it just seems like the anti-individualism, high trust societies that make Germany/Denmark/Netherlands/Sweden etc work also pretty strongly cap your life potential and your kids as an immigrant in a way North America doesn't. The UK, who knows, but at present it sure does seem occupied by provincial racists and I just feel like it would be an annoying choice as an immigrant. France also for slightly different reasons, Southern Europe you get more overt racism with less social structures and less opportunity and more corruption/insiderism so nope.
That actually feels like an optimistic take to me since I feel like it's not THAT impossible to make the USA more like Canada.
And China, Japan, Korea feel too racist and insular, India like not enough opportunity. Maybe Singapore is good if you can get there.
To the extent that people with anti-immigrant views in European countries with good welfare states justify their views by saying that benefits should be for [native-born] citizens only, I think the US may be heading for that kind of model while offering objectively shittier benefits. Like, it's hard to imagine the US really doing socialized health care, but some US anti-immigrant, anti-health care people do seem like they might actually accept some form of socialized health insurance, but only as long as people they don't think "deserve" it get excluded from it.*
Yes, I'm being vague about "some" people making this shift. I'm probably imagining it and being too optimistic about shifts in health care policy.
* I see this as distinct from existing views on Medicaid and Medicare. For the people I'm talking about, I'm more or less assuming that Medicaid is not something they imagine themselves receiving, but national health insurance is, so they'll feel like their identity is tied up with the benefit. If "everyone" is receiving the benefit, then it must not be so valuable, or they must not be so special, and that can't be right because they're so much more deserving than others. I guess I think a similar kind of thinking is at work with marriage equality as well.
13/16, 60-62: Germany has had an immigrant's son as a state governor (David McAllister in Lower Saxony, 2010-2013) and now has another as the head of the Green party in parliament. So the upper reaches of politics are not per se closed to immigrants. The very pinnacle of business may be another matter, but with big family firms (BMW, Bertelsmann, etc.) there's a question about what's really open anyway. Plus all of the structural barriers to women in the top ranks of business.
Germany has changed significantly in this regard in the nearly 20 years that I have been here (with a four-year side excursion to the Caucasus and Moscow). During the first dotcom boom, the execrable Roland Koch could campaign to some success with the slogan "Kinder statt Inder." ("Children instead of Indians," the idea being that people from India were immigrating to Germany to take over all the tech jobs.) He was governor of Hesse, and Frankfurt's hyperinfluential newspaper was pushing him as the next conservative chancellor. Now Wikipedia lists him as a lawyer and a former politician. Germany's public discourse -- and anecdatally its private discourses -- are very different than they would be if Koch had been ascendant.
For wrong-footing the conservative establishment and calling a national election before the old boys could try to push Angela Merkel out of her position as party leader, we have Gerhard Schröder to thank. (Thanks, Gerd!)
A decade later, when the crunch came, Germany had a chancellor who remembered that every German family has a refugee story in its recent past and who acted on that knowledge. I know, immigrant questions are not exactly congruent with refugee questions, but they are very closely related.
I don't think that my life potential here is any more capped than it would be in the States, and possibly even less so. Arriving with language fluency was of course a big leg up, and being an American is mostly an advantage, as these things go.
The biggest structural set of problems that I see for Germany is that the educational system replicates, more strongly than other Western European countries, the parents' social standing into the next generation. I'll be fixing that on my first day as Kaiser.
After you win the ritual combat at Reichenbach Falls.
I'll be fixing that on my first day as Kaiser.
Kaiser Wilhelm II, of course, also the son of an immigrant.
58: That sounds like a physics experiment.
Assuming it wasn't just "Can I hit this cabinet with a bullet?"
Well, that's going to be hard to justify.
In college, we had a guy shoot a block of wood (suspended from two strings) and measure how much it moved. This proved something about physics.
On reflection, it wasn't a block of wood. It was a metal cone filled with some kind of wadding to stop a bullet.
It isn't actually being affected by some low probability event that gets most people but the worry about it. America is objectively shittier on this score than many places- maybe your kids won't be shot at school, but you and they have to think about it and do active shooter drills. You probably won't lose your job the same time you're diagnosed with cancer, but you have to worry that you could be financially wiped out due to health problems. I don't know that other advanced economies have similar worries- do Europeans in major cities ever worry about mass casualty terrorist attacks since they do happen every couple years (as opposed to Americans who shit the bed about something that virtually never happens here?)
Anyway there's an entire profitable industry convincing old white men that they should be scared of everything and aside from all the money it's stolen from the marks, it's almost certainly had a huge negative impact on American quality of life just because it makes people worried about stupid shit- and thanks to the political impact of these scared people, it also makes them more susceptible to the real fears above, which makes them consume more scary news and vote more conservative and on and on.
This reminds me how angry my dad was when he learned (several years after the fact) that the leader of my brother's scout troop had always brought a gun with him on their trips.
I'm inclined to side with the scout leader here, assuming he kept the gun safely. My extremely liberal BiL always took a handgun with him when he was doing an archaeological survey of Nevada, because rattlesnakes.
At least the old white men first made sure they couldn't be wiped out financially by health problems.
73: When he slept, it would have had to have been in a tent a camp site surrounded by dozens of boys aged 12 through 17.
Personally, I think you're better off with a hiking stick than a pistol against a rattlesnake. A rattler is either sitting there, not moving, hoping you'll go away (in which case shooting it is pointless unless you're hungry) or striking (in which case I have very strong doubts about anybody being able to hit it with a handgun). But they aren't nearly as common in Nebraska or Pennsylvania as they are in Nevada, so I assume he had local advice.
I do think about getting a permit so I can carry a handgun when I hike. I'm not worried about snakes. I'm worried because all the good hiking in this state is in places where everybody voted from Trump and I know they all have guns in their trucks. Mostly what I do is try to find camping sites that are as far away from roads as possible. People willing to walk a mile or two are likely not looking for trouble.
I think right now clearly Canada is preferable to the US
This seems right. And preferable to Northern Europe because the refugee crisis there is only going to get worse (whole swaths of Iran are running out of water right now) and Canada gets to control who comes, and even counting the reasonably habitable parts, is enormous and empty.
I think if you want to make a fortune, parts of Africa might be your best bet right now, but my knowledge of that is purely anecdotal.
Ogged, I have some bad news about that email from the Nigerian prince...
Anyway with our recent travels I've been fantasizing about being a rich nomadic retiree. Current plan is have a place in Iceland for June-August, southern Spain for the fall and spring, and Costa Rica for the winter during their (relatively) dry season.
79.3: Maybe if you read the other thread you'd know you can't trust everything you saw in the Black Panther movie.
The problem with Canada right now, and it's only going to get worse, is that one can't afford to buy a house in the places one might want to live (parts of Montreal are still within reach, but Montreal is cold enough, and I'm old enough, that I view it as uninhabitable). This makes me terribly sad, particularly when I consider that I had several good opportunities to buy nice houses in Vancouver when I was younger, and especially particularly when, as happened this past Sunday, my old boss, after watching Wayne LaPierre's speech, calls me wondering why the hell I don't move back. Because I made some bad life choices/had a spot of bad luck at the wrong time, is why, asshole!
What about South America? If I were a Syrian refugee with means, I might try to get to Argentina or Brazil. They're harder to get to, but I would see my ability to replicate a higher standard of living in a relatively more tolerant (to me) society as possible there in a way it might not be in "the Global North."
Now that the whole family has passports, I keep thinking we'll visit Montreal.
83: I'm reliably informed by B movies that Dr. Mengele is down there somewhere trying to clone Hitler.
Misery loves company so come to Arrakis, at least the money's good.
We'll have to see, but it's in driving distance.
Newt is oddly fixated on attending McGill (he's a junior this year, applying to colleges in the fall). I'm not quite sure what he's thinking, but it's certainly not a bad idea, just a little inexplicable.
86 to 85. One Quebec City is bad enough!
83: I dunno; I reckon Syrian refugees are going to value expected future social stability (having just left a civil war) and northern Europe has that and Argentina and Brazil don't.
I googled for guns recommended against rattlesnakes and the answer seemed to be shotguns loaded with birdshot.
(There is a "pocket shotgun pistol" on the market, I originally learned from someone joking about it being in case birds try to mug you in an alley, but I guess it would serve this purpose too.)
Yes. I wouldn't think a shotgun would be useless, but of course it is more awkward to carry.
I cut up part of an old sail to make ankle/calf guards when I went hiking in a rattlesnake area a couple of decades ago. I didn't see any but the remains of a dead snake. I did not check it for bullet wounds.
I wonder if you could rent a mongoose.
I don't know that other advanced economies have similar worries- do Europeans in major cities ever worry about mass casualty terrorist attacks since they do happen every couple years (as opposed to Americans who shit the bed about something that virtually never happens here?)
Not as a general rule, no. I think about it when one is happening, but otherwise, no, not at all.
I do worry that the whole 'rent a truck or van and just mow people down' thing is a bit too easy and appealing to shit heads, I suppose. But only on a fairly abstract level. I can't say the worry of it is at all present in my daily thought.
Of course, this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_London
is really rather long, with 5 in the past calendar year.
What about in the 80s when the terrorist attacks were happening in the UK much more frequently than they are happening in any Western country now?
The problem with Canada right now, and it's only going to get worse, is that one can't afford to buy a house in the places one might want to live
Generally right, though my wife might be one of about five non-Norwegians who can look at the climate differences between Toronto and Ottawa and definitely prefer Ottawa. I know that's basically a city vs. town comparison, but if you do prefer the weather, Ottawa seems very nice, and houses aren't cheap, but aren't insane (yet).
Well, I was living in Scotland during that time, which wasn't really having any terror attacks.* My grandparents and other relatives lived in London, though, so I suppose I thought about it a bit, but again, it wasn't a fear that was very present in my thinking. Can't speak for others.
* well, in my lifetime:
Lockerbie
one 1970s Loyalist attack on pubs in Glasgow
some nationalist (Scottish nationalist) letter bombers and minor nut-jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_National_Liberation_Army
Glasgow Airport attack (when sundry members of the public "intervened")
I guess they had to put the "National" in there to avoid being the SLA and have everything expect them to liberate Symbionia.
I don't think the SNLA were ever really a thing. Literally two or three disaffected nutters.
If there's one thing America proves, it's the damage even one disaffected nutter can do.
104
I believe that's a Margaret Mead quote.
Never doubt that a few heavily-armed disaffected nutters can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
I hate hearing that men bring guns into wilderness areas because I'm way more afraid of men with guns than any of the wildlife. Except maybe cougars but you probably won't see them coming anyway. I, of course, don't/wouldn't bring a gun into a wilderness situation because I think it's more likely that a man would use it against me than I'd use it against wildlife. Men ruin everything.
When diamondbacks showed up outside the house in Tucson, we'd call our herpetologist neighbor and he'd come over with a sack and a forked stick. The birdshot thing makes sense if you live out on a farm/ranch/geodesic dome and meet a snake that you don't want to keep haunting the premises. The rattlers I've met on trail hikes have never required any action other than standing back and waiting for the snake to move off the trail, which it wants to do anyway.
There's no reason to shoot a snake. If you're far enough away to use a shotgun, you're far enough to run/walk/go away. If you're closer and can use a pistol, you're an idiot who wasn't looking where you were walking, isn't wearing protective boots/gaiters, and probably has been bitten already because you cannot quick draw. Also you've probably already walked past like 5 snakes without even realizing.
Snake bites happen to the hands of young drunk men.
I've certainly never worried about it beyond looking around carefully. I don't wear boots in nice weather or gaiters if I'm on a trail.
Also, 109 is right. I'd shoot a snake if it was poisonous and trying to live near me.
And I didn't live in town. I'm not nuts.
Rattlesnakes rattle before they strike, which gives you a brief period to either get away or, I guess, shoot them. My dad once killed one with a hoe. I'd never heard before of people carrying guns specifically for protection against snakes, though. (Bears, yes.)
110: When RWM and her mother saw a rattlesnake on a hike, the ranger they talked to afterwards explained that they were safe because they weren't in the right demographic for snakebites which was "young men with a low tooth to tattoo ratio."
I worked with some guys who brought guns to a National Forest in Alabama for the snakes. And my husband had techs working with him who brought guns to a (university run) field camp in Maine for the 'bears' without telling anyone.
I had guns in a couple camp situation but we had polar bears (and very strict protocols for when and how to carry and load them).
Rattlesnakes are really not very aggressive snakes and will rattle at you even if they don't plan to bite. My corn snake will even 'rattle' if she doesn't feel comfortable.
Yes? Her name is Hera. Or did you mean the rattle? She just wiggles her tail tip around.
I wonder if you could rent a mongoose.
Come to Hawaii and pick one up for free.
(Offer not available on Kauai. Also, we have no snakes here, except for little blind ones that live in the ground and look like worms but move like snakes. And the occasional stowaway brown tree snake from Guam, the occasional illegal pet, and God only knows what else.)
Ottawa seems very nice, and houses aren't cheap, but aren't insane (yet).
Yes, but. A lot of Ottawa houses are in newer neighbourhoods. Not grim, exactly, but kind of dull and flat and uninspired. The nicer/older houses, on tree-lined blocks in older neighbourhoods, have really gone up in price in recent years. Not Vancouver-Toronto crazy, but still kind of pricey.
On topic, I think I'm with Krugman in having some hope that we're bottoming out and turning for the better.
I thought Mongooses recently got to Kauai?
Quick Google search turns up reports of several being trapped in recent years, but not clear whether there's an established population. I haven't been over there in a couple of years, but AFAIK they haven't made a dent in the feral chicken population yet.
A lot of Ottawa houses are in newer neighbourhoods
Interesting. I have no sense of the neighborhoods.
narnia has many defects, but getting shot ever under any circumstances is not one of them. if your gambling problem gets out of control and you owe money to sketchy people they will throw red paint on your apartment door, shaming your family before your neighbors YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE. I guess in the absolute worst case scenario someone might come threaten you with a machete. but as long as you don't borrow money from dangerous people you're fine.
on reflection they actually have pretty tight security at the international schools I guess so maybe I shouldn't be so superior. the american school has gurkhas with smashed-down berets and semi-automatic rifles at the gates. still, the number of school shootings we've had is zero, and the amount of mental energy I devote to worrying about it is also zero. when girl x was in a US high school a small part of me was scared all the time.
they had school shooter drills and that creeped her--and me--out so bad.
Sure, we pointlessly risk death, but at least we can piss on a elevator without getting caught.
We just got an email from the school that they reviewed the security plan and do so after every major shooting. On the plus side we're in a state with at least some restrictions (even need a permit to possess pepper spray) although how useful is that when you're bordered by a couple of high gun states. On the down side our school might be a slightly higher likelihood target for conservative wackos- I have a fear that it will get on the radar of some radio nut who will make it their outrage of the day or something.
Americans are trained to drink lots of water so their piss isn't conductive enough to short out the elevator control panel.
I have no sense of the neighborhoods.
Old Ottawa (The Glebe; New Edinburgh; Sandy Hill...to name just a few of the neighbourhoods) is lovely, charming, and character-filled, with Victorian-era brick houses and etc.; but is also increasingly expensive (though not yet Toronto-Vancouver expensive).
Much of the available housing stock in Ottawa, though, is found in much newer neighbourhoods, with houses built after 1970 or so. Great central heating systems, but not so much with the architectural charm. And while many of these places are actually wonderful places to live (plus, you know, universal, single-payer health care), there is definitely a flatness, or a dullness, to the post-WWII built environment.
Thanks! I actually don't like old houses, which creak and are money pits, but I do like leafy neighborhoods.