Sunday, February 17, 2008

DO THE MATH

Math was never my long suit.
I got D's in high school math and managed to avoid it in college.
It takes putting a dollar sign in front of a number to pique my interest. Do that and you have my rapt attention.

So, having said that, let me proffer a thought regarding some of the horrific crimes that seem to occur with much greater frequency lately. You know the ones I mean: Crazed guy with gun opens up on students, kidnappings, rapes, brutal armed robberies. Front page stuff.

I know my first thought every time one of these awful events happens is..."It didn't used to be like this." Most of us don't recall "these kind of things" happening when we were younger. Maybe the world IS going to hell in a hand basket.

This is where I get back to math. The population of the United States has more than doubled since 1950. In that year we had approximately 150 million souls residing inside the then forty-eight states. Now, we have more than 300 million.
If we postulate that perhaps one person out of one-hundred is capable of committing a heinous crime against his or her fellow human beings, that alone would double the number of incidents happening in America. Couple that with the now "pollitically correct" tendency to "mainstream" the mentally deficient among us instead of shipping them to the goon garage and you have the makings of a headline inducing horrific event.

It's all about the math. Too many rats in the cage.
Don't get me started on the merits of public executions.
That's where subtraction can really be your friend.

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