It is all downhill from here. Good, I'm tired.
I had forgotten to get a can of pumpkin, so the pie had to wait until today. I have been watching a lot of old episodes of Good Eats on my Zune, so I decided to skip the pumpkin and make Alton's sweet potato pie. It was great. I think it would have been even better if we had followed his recipe closer. We used light brown sugar instead of dark because Wal-mart was out of everything! We also skipped the pecans and maple surup on top. Next time I will be sure to get the dark stuff and will likely use walnuts as I am not really fond of pecans.
On an unrelated note, I finally signed up for a Google Adwords account and setup a technical blog over at LockerGnome. I called it Minimum Verbosity. Please take a look and let me know what you think!
It's official, we have a new dog; Buster Keyton Jorgensen
I am sure Mary will have more and better pictures up soon.
Ok, I am going to try one more time to explain why I was interested in the cause of death numbers I posted a while back.
Here is the train of thought that caused me to post them (remember you are dealing with computer geek here) as far as I can remember.
- Woah, lady get out of my way so I can turn onto Providence and drive home.
(This actually happened, she was standing in the middle of the turn lane waving at someone WITH HER BACK TO ME!) - Oh, she has a sign, it says that almost x,xxx Americans have been killed in Iraq.
(No, I don’t remember what the number actually was.) - Ouch, that many dead, that is just under a thousand a year.
- Wait a minute, didn't the news say that thousands and thousands of people died last year on Americas highways?
- I wonder how many people Americans die each year and what's killing them.
(What's likely to get me? See #2 on the list, and remind me to get off my ass next time you see me.)
Bam, that was it.
When said I was looking for context, the above is what I thinking. What I should have said (hindsight is 20/20) is that I was looking for a sense of scale.
Personally I think we should see more protesters. We need the war protesters to remind us what is going on over there and what it is costing us, but we also need people protesting against alcohol and tobacco.
Can you imagine someone trying to bring tobacco to market today? They would be laughed at (and I am pretty sure we have laws against selling against anything addictive.) I think it is pretty stupid tobacco gets a green-light just because it is already on the market.
And yes, it MUCH more complicated than that, but damn it, this is an personal blog, not a peer reviewed scientific journal. Please compare it to the [sarcasam] important and socially significant content [/sarcasm] of other personal blogs, not to an episode 60 minutes.
So... If you take anything away from my list, let it be that I am anti-alcohol and anti-tobacco, and that after looking at the numbers, I think everyone else should be too.
PS. I am turning on comment moderation, but I only plan to edit out F-bombs and the like. F*** is fine, but let's at least try. My daughter is still a minor. Looks like I can't do anything about the existing one though. If you know how to edit existing comments, please let me know.
Ok, I must be getting old. I have been up by 6am all week. Of course that also means that I have been in bed by midnight (and usually 9pm) every night.
While I am really enjoying having extra time in the morning, it still feels really strange to be up.
DON'T PUT FUCKING WORDS IN MY MOUTH.
You don't know what I think, and there is nothing "obvious" about it.
We went to war because we were duped into believing that there were WMDs there. That is the only consideration that was presented to the American people. I was duped - I hoped against hope that they would find weapons and America would be "right."
When that proved false, the US decided to "spread democracy" through war using Iraq as an example/staging point. This was possibly the plan all along; perhaps the people in power were being sincere. I don't know.
What I do know is that we're there, still. And what's the point in that? That's what I was asking, and you attack me when I bring up valid points and put your imaginary "context" in actual context.
Thank you. That's great.
I do appologize for putting words in your mouth but I was pissed off at you for making a post about "American Deaths in 2005" be just about the war. When I read your comment, it seemed to imply (by omission) that it is ok that Tobacco is killing almost half a million people a year. (Yes, I know you were not saying that, but your focus on Iraq says more about your frame of mind then it does about my post.)
As for my use of the word context, here is what I found on dictionary.com:
"the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc."
So in my use the "event, situation, etc" was the 'number of Americans killed in Iraq'. It was not 'The war in Iraq' in general.
By context, I meant the context of causes of death. Seems like a perfectly reasonable use of the word to me.
(If you read my latest post you will see that I now realize could have been more specific and used the term SCALE.) What I was thinking was 'how do these numbers compare to other causes of death.'
Once again, my post was not about the war, it was about the things that are killing Americans each year. The war protesters just made me start thinking about it.
Finally found some numbers to put the "Americans Killed In Iraq" banners I see people holding on the street corners in context.
American 'cause of death' stats for 2005
(Sorry, I miss-read. All the numbers are for a 1 year period, the are NOT all from 2005.)
435,000 Tobacco
365,000 Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity
85,000 Alcohol Related
75,000 Microbial Agents
55,000 Toxic Agents
32,000 Adverse Reactions To Prescription Drugs
30,622 Suicide
29,000 Incidents Involving Firearms
26,347 Motor Vehicle Crashes
20,308 Homicide
20,000 Sexual Behaviors
17,000 Illicit Use of Drugs
7,600 Anti-Inflammatory Drugs
846 Killed in Iraq
0 Marijuana
The numbers are not 1 to 1, death to cause. For example 16,653 of the motor vehicle deaths were alcohol related, and are counted in both 'Motor Vehicle Crashes' and 'Alcohol Related'.
Sources: Iraq numbers, the rest.
846 American troops out of the current 138,000 in Iraq gives a .613% rate. Even counting ALL 200k American AND Coalition troops involved in the "War on Terror," you still get a .423% rate. It's higher than the .3967% figured above, regardless.
But none of that matters at all, because this is a straw man. The troops don't *need* to be in Iraq at all. There's no way to "win" at this point, and there's nothing left to "win" anyway. We're sending American troops to their deaths for no discernible reason. What's the point in that? 846 deaths is 846 too many. That's just last year, too. There have been >2600 US troop deaths in Iraq, and over 200 other Coalition casualties since 2003.
For what?
You know, just being a contrarian since I agree with those people with the signs, and I "honk for peace." There's your context ;)
Marines only serve 9 months in Iraq while on a deployment while Army soldiers serve at least 12 months, sometimes being extended to 14 or 18 months depending upon the unit.
Ultimately it means that 200k for all coalition soldiers is a lowball figure, although I have no solid data on which units were deployed during the time frame in question or their troop strengths.
Which also avoids the entire issue that they are there on a false pretense, reguardless of how much of a tyrant Saddamm was and how badly he should have been removed.
I posted this because I kept hearing that 'x' number of Americans have died in Iraq since the war started and I wanted to know how that compared to other causes of death for Americans in the same time period.
Excuse me for wanting some scale. I know that less is more when you are pushing your political agenda.
Of course I don't see any of you 'activists' protesting on the corner to try "save our boys" from alcohol and tobacco. Hell why would you waste your time; Why worry about half a million people volunteering to kill themselves every year for a smoke and a beer when you have the chance to save the approximately one thousand that are forcibly pressed into the American war machine and killed every year. Oh wait, they volunteered too. I guess you just value the lives of soldiers more than civilians. How very noble of you.
"Which also avoids the entire issue that they are there on a false pretense, reguardless of how much of a tyrant Saddamm was and how badly he should have been removed."
We went to war for a lot of reasons. Some with play 'hero' and say we went there purely to get rid of Saddamm. Others will say we only went there for oil. Obviously Ryan things we are then just because we like to kill people.
I happen to think that it, like eveything else is really complicated and we went there for many reasons, but all of that has nothing to do with my post. All I wanted was to contrast what the war is costing us each year in American lives compared to the number of lives lost each year to non-military American just living their lives.
Obviously I am a dangerous rebel that refuses to follow the shallow and meaningless rules of grammar and spelling. Sorry about that.
I am on day 3 with Vista RC1 on my home computer and my primary laptop at work. So far the only thing that does not work is 802.1x which fails to authenticate.
I was really surprised when 'glass' worked out of the box on my Dell D620. It has an integrated Intel chip and glass had not worked in any previous build. It not only works in RC1, it pretty dang fast.
Joe, Sara, Mary, Erik, Julie 
