VT Students turn to God

<p>Dr. Roger Passman</p>
<p>April 18, 2007</p>
<p>Reporting for <a href="http://tinyurl.com/35g965">Reuters</a>, Andrea Hopkins writes:</a></p>
<blockquote>By all accounts, the prayers started even before the gunshots stopped at Virginia Tech university, and the pleas to God from grief-stricken survivors of the massacre have continued ever since.</blockquote>
<blockquote>"God cares about Virginia Tech," said Megan Martin, 24, joining about a dozen fellow students in a traveling prayer vigil that rambled across the sprawling campus a day after the worst U.S. shooting spree in modern history.</blockquote>
<blockquote>Carrying placards reading: "Jesus loves you," "God knows and He cares," and "Can we pray with you?" the small knot of students worked their way through the university grounds in Blacksburg, a Bible Belt town in the mountains of southwest Virginia.</blockquote>
<p>I suppose turning to God(s) cannot do any serious harm to the individual that does the turning. The evidence, however, does not justify such a move. <i>"God cares about Virginia Tech," said Megan Martin</i>, is quoted in the article. Is this God so cruel that he (she, it) only cares after the fact? Is this God(s) so indifferent that he (she, it) only takes an interest after the dastardly deed has been accomplished? God knows and He cares, is another after the fact fantasy that may serve to salve heightened emotions but does not address the fundamental issue-was this God who cares so much simply on vacation when Cho Seung-Hui decided to engage on a shooting rampage on the VT campus? Does the evidence point to a God(s) who cares, who knows? I think not. What the evidence points to is a random series of events that occur every so often because Americans are willing to sacrifice security for the right to bear arms for any purpose whatsoever. The evidence does not point to a loving God(s) but, rather, to a heightened probability that because guns are so readily available in the United States tragic events such as the VT shootings are more likely than not to occur.</p>
<p>While turning to God(s) is a defensive move in cases of unthinkable tragedy for many people, it seems to me that it is simply a misplaced use of human energy. Telling one&#39;s self that God(s) really care, while that might have a temporary calming effect, does nothing to solve the problem that lies at the root of the VT shootings. Far more productive an approach is to focus the anger and frustration one feels in moments of unspeakable tragedy into efforts to place meaningful regulation on the ownership of weapons that have no other use than to cause permanent harm to those to whom the guns are directed. Gun nuts that demand no regulation of weapons spouting rights granted under the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States <i>(A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed,)</i> must ask: <b>to what militia did Cho Seung-Hui belong</b> when he began his rampage? Why was Cho Seung-Hui permitted to purchase and own guns? Why do we put up with this cowboy mentality? Is life really imitating the wild west shootout of the movies?</p>
<p>Rather than turning to God(s) how about turning to Congress and demanding that your lawmakers do something to prevent tragedies like this from ever happening again. If you don&#39;t then, it seems to me, that events like the VT shootings will surely occur over and over, again and again. One Italian journalist wrote that the VT shootings are as American as apple pie. It this the image America and Americans portray to the world? Is this the image we want to portray? It is time to stop the madness.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original Source: <a href="http://rpassman.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/vt-students-turn-to-god/">http://rpassman.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/vt-students-turn-to-god/</a></p>
<p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States</a>.</p>

Roger Passman

2007-05-24

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States

eng

Virginia Tech: It's Not About Gun Control, and You're a Fool or a Monster If You Say It Is

Apr. 18th, 2007 at 12:02 AM

Virginia is, if memory serves, one of the states that had a particularly malevolently horrible 2004 national election, one marked by substantial Republican chicanery and vicious suppression of the minority vote, so the last thing on earth that I could ever have imagined myself doing was cheering for Virginia&#39;s Republican governor, Tim Kaine. But Tuesday afternoon I not only cheered out loud over something he said, I was so glad he said it that I was waving my fist over my head and very nearly jumped out of my chair. And it wasn&#39;t just what he said, but how he said it; I wish I could find a way to show it to you. But at the end of the Tuesday press conference, some sleazebag in the audience, knowing how pro-gun Kaine is, tossed him what he probably thought was a softball question, namely, did the governor think that some of the deaths could have been averted if Virginia Polytechnic students had been allowed to carry concealed firearms on campus? Instead of the reaction the so-called "reporter" was expecting, what happened was that governor Kaine&#39;s face twisted up as if he had bitten into a bug. And with disgust dripping from his voice, he said something to the effect that the only response he had to anybody who would try to use this tragedy to make any kind of a point about gun control was "total loathing."

And he&#39;s right. So I don&#39;t feel good that I&#39;ve let some of you prod me into having to defend my statement from last night that neither more guns on campus, nor fewer guns, would have made things any better. That some of y&#39;all are sliming up this horrible but essentially random tragedy, that some of you are dragging your muddy political bootprints all over this while the corpses aren&#39;t even yet in the ground, that so many of you are so sick as to seek to twist this massacre into proof that your side should win in the literally pointless debate over gun control before even one family can bury their dead in peace, both sickens me and lowers my opinion of some of you. It lowers my opinion of your collective intelligence, too, because both arguments are so trivially disposed of that I&#39;m having to struggle to maintain my faith in your sincerity -- or even your basic decency, your humanity. If you&#39;re one of the people who&#39;s been doing so, whether pro-gun or anti-gun, you should be ashamed of yourself.

<b>Fewer Guns Wouldn&#39;t Have Prevented the Massacre.</b> I&#39;d like to thank <a href="http://xiphias.livejournal.com/">xiphias</a> for being the first to point out to me, in the replies to somebody else&#39;s journal posting, that while the Virginia Tech massacre is the worst school shooting in American history, it is only the second worst school massacre. The worst school massacre in American history was in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster">Bath Township, Michigan</a>, and its murderer used no guns at all, but instead a pair of bombs. It was in 1927, before the Depression even really began, when a farmer about to lose his farm because of rising property taxes decided to vent his wrath on the community by destroying the public building they were taking his farm to pay off, the local school. With the students still in it. He then waited at the scene, and made history as the first ever suicide car bomber, blowing up the first wave of would-be rescuers who rushed to the scene.

This is probably also a good time to remind you that it is, perhaps, a good thing that Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold had guns. They had not planned to shoot up Columbine High School. They had planned to level it, and to that end had planted two ill-designed propane bombs. Their original plan was to use the guns only to pick off any survivors of the blast that escaped the rubble, before killing each other. Had they not had guns, they might have come back another day with better bombs instead of wandering around shooting at random, and the death toll would probably have been substantially higher. I know that Seung Cho didn&#39;t do anything at Virginia Tech on Monday that he couldn&#39;t have done just as easily and even more effectively with a machete or a good kitchen knife and a couple of ordinary pipe bombs.

England&#39;s got pretty strict gun control, you know. During the Troubles, this caused neither the Irish Republican Army nor the Ulster militias any difficulty whatsoever whenever they got the urge to slaughter a large number of people in British-occupied Ireland, either. Oh, once in a rare while they used guns smuggled to them (depending on which side they were on) either from the British army or from sympathizers here in the US. But more often, they used explosives. It&#39;s also worth pointing out that, since we destroyed their government, Iraqis have had a Virginia-Tech-sized school massacre at least once a month for the last four years. Even though the Iraqi people are some of the most heavily armed in the world, even more heavily armed than your average American, none of their school massacres have involved guns, either. When al Qaeda wants to slaughter high school or college students, they use suicide bombers, just like at Bath Township, just like the Columbine killers tried to do. For that matter, when Timothy McVeigh decided to slaughter a ton of federal employees in Oklahoma City in revenge for the Waco massacre, he didn&#39;t need any guns to do it, either, remember? Just some ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a couple of barrels of diesel fuel, and a few blasting caps.

Throughout history, we&#39;ve been lucky when the sickos take up guns rather than bombs; the bombers were the ones that produced the truly horrific death tolls. So you should count yourself lucky that Seung Cho had decided to buy two handguns when he was indulging his violent fantasies to himself over the last month or so, one of them a weeny little .22 that he probably didn&#39;t manage to kill anybody with, rather than the dynamite or pipe bombs or other improvised explosive devices he might have bought or built if he hadn&#39;t had guns.

<b>More Guns Wouldn&#39;t Have Prevented the Massacre, Either.</b> I grant that this case is a little harder to make, but the only reason that this isn&#39;t obvious is that too many of you have failed to think through what would have happened if some armed student had tried to use his own handgun to overpower Seung Cho. So let&#39;s roll back the clock to Monday morning, or roll it forward to the next school shooting, and pit Rampaging Killer against some hypothetical John Q. Student, both of them armed with handguns. It&#39;s 9:45 on a Monday morning, and it has slowly dawned on John that that banging noise down the hall isn&#39;t construction, but some guy with a gun and a ton of ammunition working his way from classroom to classroom. Or maybe John gets a text message on his phone from someone who tells him that there&#39;s a pistol-wielding maniac in a bullet-proof vest full of ammo heading his way. John, being a responsible type, draws his weapon, pulls the firing pin out of his wallet and resets it, removes the safety, chambers a round, and somehow miraculously gets this all done in time to draw a careful bead on the door, waiting for Rampaging Killer to enter. We will even give him the unlikely credit for having thought to look for the flak jacket and the gun, so he doesn&#39;t accidentally shoot any of his fellow students who are fleeing from the shooter into this room. So the door bangs open, and John Q. Student sees a flak jacket and a gun, and then one of only three possible things happens:

1. Remember that John Q. Student has not just spent the whole morning practicing shooting at real human beings. On the contrary, shooting at an actual human being is something that he&#39;s never done before. In fact, the odds against his having ever fired a pistol at any moving target are astronomical. Also, we know that John Q. Student has at least some humanitarian impulse, at least some urge to not shoot at people. I say this because, frankly, if he&#39;s been carrying this gun with him everywhere he goes for long enough that he happened to have it on him when he needed it, if he didn&#39;t have that hesitation to shoot another person, he would have shot somebody by now and would be in jail, not in a classroom waiting for Rampaging Killer. So I flatly guarantee you that he shoots late, and that he jerks the weapon when he shoots as his body reflexively tries to stop him from shooting someone, and the round goes completely wild. How can I guarantee this? Because this situation has come up over and over again since the invention of the gun, and it is what everybody except for a few combat veterans has done, the first time that they&#39;ve fired a gun at a criminal. And that&#39;s if he fires the gun at all. In example after example, we have seen that what John Q. Student is much more likely to do is the stupidest thing he could possibly do: shout "drop the weapon" or yell "stop or I&#39;ll shoot" or fire a warning shot, wanting to give Rampaging Killer a chance to surrender. All that this achieves is to tell Rampaging Killer, now a practiced shooter, exactly where to aim. If Rampaging Killer hadn&#39;t made up his mind whether or not to shoot up this particular room, he does now, starting with emptying his clip at John and thereby gunning down everybody between John and the wall behind him, and everybody for three feet on either side.

2. Or else, when John Q. Student sees a flak jacket and a gun come through that door, he&#39;s thought of this possibility. Or maybe he&#39;s a combat veteran himself. So knowing better than to try to get Rampaging Killer to not shoot, he immediately opens fire the instant he has a target, and let&#39;s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he shoots improbably accurately. Only guess what? More doors were banged open by the SWAT team, who covered more of the building looking for Rampaging Killer, than were banged open by Rampaging Killer. So the odds are that John Q. Student shoots Officer Friendly, and now we have at least one more corpse. And at least one more killer.

3. Or else maybe this particular John Q. Student is a combat veteran, and an Olympic quality pistol shot, and has faster reflexes than your average Olympic athlete and thinks faster and more clearly than any college aged student you&#39;ve ever met in your life or that you ever will. So in the 1/10th of a second between when the flak jacket and gun crash through that door and when he would need to pull the trigger, he recognizes Officer Friendly&#39;s police uniform, and therefore holds his fire. Officer Friendly makes his combat entry into the room, sweeping his weapon across it in a practiced move, knowing that if Rampaging Killer is in the room and waiting for him then he absolutely must get a shot into Rampaging Killer fast or he&#39;s going to die. Officer Friendly sees John Q. Student&#39;s gun barrel, mistakes John Q. Student for Rampaging Killer, and empties an assault rifle into the area where John Q. Student is sitting, killing John, everybody within 3 feet either side of him, and everybody behind him for at least two rooms. Alas, Rampaging Killer was two floors away. Now we have an entire roomful of more victims.

No other outcome is even vaguely humanly possible. Frankly, if he had any impulse to fight the Rampaging Killer rather than to jump out a window or bar the door, John Q. Student would have been safer and just as effective if he had used his bare hands.

And to again draw the parallel to Iraq, I&#39;ve read that virtually every adult male Iraqi owns an assault rifle, and has since long before Saddam was overthrown. If "more guns" are the solution to school violence, then why are the Iraqis having at least one Virginia-Tech-sized school massacre every month?

<b>So What Are the Politicians Supposed to Do?</b> Voters in a democracy are prone to an obnoxious fault: when something truly awful happens, they demand that every elected official do something about it, right now. It doesn&#39;t matter whether or not there is anything that elected official can do that would be at all useful. All that matters is that the voters see every politician prove that he or she cares about the same things the voters care about by doing something, however futile or counter-productive. So in a way, while it&#39;s sick and tragic and pointless and futile and stupid and inhumane to the families of the victims that we&#39;re having a gun control argument now, I suppose it is sadly inevitable. So what do I think the politicians should do to prevent the next massacre like the one at Virginia Tech instead of arguing about gun control? Nothing. Let&#39;s face facts. One third of the nation is mentally ill. Of that hundred million people, there are probably at least 10,000 who are sick, twisted loners who are total losers with their preferred sex, prone to stalkerish behavior, and altogether too fond of really sick violent imagery. Heck, I&#39;ve known at least two of them personally. Every eight years or so, one of those 10,000 people goes off. And there is still no way to predict which of those 10,000 people are going to go off, and no way to coral or herd or manage or contain or even disarm those 10,000 sickos without setting even more of them off than already go off.

Learn elementary first aid, practice building evacuations, live a good and loving and full life, and if you have dependents pay your life insurance. Not because every eight years or so you have a one in 10,000,000 chance of being the victim of a rampaging mass murderer, but because you run a much higher probability of at least once in your life of being involved in some kind of random disaster, whether from dangerous weather, or other natural disaster, or a building fire, or an act of war, or any of a long long list of things that can go wrong in this life. Sometimes death just comes at random. Sometimes there just isn&#39;t anything useful we can do about that other than to do what you political carrion eaters aren&#39;t allowing us to quietly do instead of getting dragged into your pointless argument, and that&#39;s to comfort the survivors and rebuild.

* Mood: aggravated

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Original Source: <a href="http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/328865.html">http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/328865.html</a>

licensed under the <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.

J. Brad Hicks

2007-05-24

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike 2.5

eng

News Coverage of the VA tech Shooting

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Topics like these are always hard to approach. For some, the event holds particular weight, either because of their relationship with the victims, with the assailant, with the location where it takes place, or because of the events relationship with another similar incident.

The coverage of these events is usually the same. To provide the viewer with context- there is footage of the location from every possible angle, there are reporter stand-ups near the location providing a feeling of being well informed by the people "on the scene", there is video from security cams or other sources that allow an inside view of the event or of the lead up to it, and there is commentary, lots of commentary.

In these ways, as is the case with much of news today, the coverage of such events can be compared to the coverage of a sporting event: Heavy on filler, and light on actual content. As of today, it&#39;s been almost a week since the incident, and coverage of the shooting takes up a giant share of the programming schedules of networks. With less that four or five (if that) big stories running at the same time, it is in the forefront of the news audiences mind.

Like most tragedies, answers are what are sought after most, that and blame. And this is what takes up most of the coverage. There are investigations into the profile of the assailant, interviews by "experts" in the field, with witnesses, with family, with victims of other similar tragedies, with law enforcement, with neighbors, ad <b>nauseam</b>.

We watch all of this and assume that somehow there can be meaning found once all the pieces are known. That if enough time is spent on it, answers will be found, that proper blame will be placed, justice will be served. This is a false hope.

Tragedies like these happen all the time. Not all of them are covered. Not all of them are given the weight that The Virginia Tech Shooting has been given. This is not to belittle the severity of the situation, nor is it to undermine the pain that resonates from the news of such an event, or the loss of the survivors. What should be looked at however is how these events are covered in the news, and how it affects our understanding of them as a viewer.

The news media does a great job of drawing connections between events in order to apply meaning. This event is connected with the Columbine shooting, as it is also a mass shooting in a school. Connections are drawn between the fear of terrorism, and the fear of an unexpected terror. The words "Terror", and "Terrorist" are thrown around wantonly. Particular weight is given to the assailant&#39;s status as an American, drawing further connections to the fears of an attack by a foreigner. It is put into the temporal context as being "the deadliest shooting in American History" or it is given by some news agencies even more gravity by being called a "Massacre", a "deadly rampage". What does it mean to be the "Deadliest", is the loss of ten victims more profound then thirty, or one? How many victims are required for it to be counted as a massacre? Are there particular characteristics that make a shooting a rampage, instead of a methodical series of executions? There is no litmus test for tragedy outside of personal experience.

These titles are nothing more than advertising slogans and marketing catch phrases. They are designed to draw the audience in, to get them to pay closer attention to the coverage of one report over another, to boost viewer-ship and ratings. To help fill this content, the lions share of programming time is given to interviews with the "experts", the press conference, and news releases after the fact. Officials stand in front of a dozen microphones twice a day, stating that they have "no further information at this time" and "those questions can&#39;t be answered during an ongoing investigation". But some news outlets are quick to point fingers. To cast blame. Somehow talk show celebrities like Dr. Phil are considered experts into the mind of a killer by CNN, and is constantly referred to in order to gain insight into how this could happen, when in reality his role is one of familiarity. Dr. Phil is placed in front of the camera to draw in the viewer ship of his entire constituency. For countless American viewers, he is a trusted face that could help bring meaning to such an event.

Witnesses are interviewed hours after the event. "How does it feel to be one of the only survivors?", "How did you escape?", "How does this affect you? These questions, while apparently directed to the witness, are really directed to the audience placing themselves in the survivor&#39;s shoes. "How would I handle this?" is the question. How can I learn from this? The reporter leans in and asks the obvious- "have you talked to anybody about this yet, are you seeking professional help?" Obviously not yet, they are in front of the camera. They are prevented from recovery so that the audience can gain catharsis and false closure instead.

What is missed in all this is that we are all being exploited in some way in order to boost ratings and sell advertising space. The coverage is excessive, bordering on irresponsible. People are pulled out of the woodwork, their lives interrupted so that we can know what it was like to be in elementary school with someone who grows up to be a killer. We see a mother of a child who murdered dozens and then killed himself, and wonder why she is stunned and despondent. We "talk" to "experts" who say this is a gun control issue, that everyone should be armed. We hear from security experts who say it&#39;s because of a lack of police and security presence, and other similar people who are pushing their own agenda, not helping to inform on the subject.

The audience wants to know what is happening out there. They want to know when they should be legitimately worried about something, and this is what they get instead; hyperbole, speculation, grandstanding and sensationalism.

One particular interview strikes a nerve. A criminologist was being interviewed on a major network, and was asked how this could happen. Is it video game violence, easy access to guns, copycat crimes, bad parenting? The criminologist dismissed these easy scapegoats and answered in the only rational way anyone could. He said, that it is a combination of factors. Not every one is predisposed to criminal behavior like this, but under the wrong conditions an unstable mind can be pushed to commit horrendous things.

The real problem is that the system is such that someone this unstable could slip through the cracks and not get the care and attention that they need to heal. The problem is the focus on violence in media after the fact, not before it happens. The problem is a society who would sooner cast blame on others than take care of their own, or that would blame lax immigration laws that would allow for someone like this to get into the country, instead of diligently pushing for a system where those with emotional and mental problems get help. But ultimately the problem is that no real meaning can be found in a situation like this. No matter how many laws are in place, or police are around, or security checkpoints we have, a troubled mind left unchecked, will find a way to follow through with their plan. The news agencies and the commentators will be standing by, ready to add their opinion to the pile, without ever providing solutions to the core societal problems that allow tragedies to unfold. The sound-bytes will search for meaning in a meaningless action. The viewer will tune in to try and add meaning to their understanding of the situation, drawing from the only resources that they have. The advertisers will reap the rewards of our attention.

Change must take place in the way these types of things are covered in the news so that people can help to identify those that need our help before extremes of desperation are reached. A change in the way we look at tragedy must take place before meaning can be found. Tragedy and our fear of it must not be exploited for the profit by the news. We as the audience must demand more than empty rhetoric and facile coverage and questioning, bold red headlines and somber musical montages of mourners. We must demand more, of ourselves and of the news.

Posted by nickdigital2.0 at 5:01 PM

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Original Source: <a href="http://alifelessmediated.blogspot.com/2007/04/news-coverage-of-va-tech-shooting.html">http://alifelessmediated.blogspot.com/2007/04/news-coverage-of-va-tech-shooting.html</a>

Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License</a>.

Nicholas Whitaker

2007-05-23

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License

eng

We Need Emergency SMS Broadcasting Tools NOW!

<p>April 16, 2007</p>
<p>It&#39;s been a dizzying day taking in the horrible news from Virginia Tech, just a few hours west of DC, with at least 30 people on campus killed by a lone gunman. I spent a good part of the morning running back and forth between NPR&#39;s digital media department, the offices of Talk of the Nation, and the central hub space shared by NPR&#39;s news team during emergencies.</p>
<p>Now that I&#39;ve had a chance to sit on the train, head back home from work, and think about what happened today, I&#39;m already angered by one bit of news I hadn&#39;t considered earlier in the day: that approximately two hours passed between the first shooting incident and the later massacre in the classrooms. During that time, it appears that almost no communications went out, apart from several mass email informing students of a shooting incident earlier in the day. The first email went out just before 9:30am, just after the final shootings began in the classrooms:</p>
<blockquote>Subject: Shooting on campus.

"A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating.

"The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case. Contact Virginia Tech Police at 231-6411

"Stay attuned to the http://www.vt.edu. We will post as soon as we have more information."</blockquote>
<p>This was followed by several other emails:</p>
<blockquote>Second email sent at 9:50 a.m.:

Subject: PLease stay put

"A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows"

Third email sent at 10:17 a.m.:

Subject: All Classes Canceled; Stay where you are

"Virginia Tech has canceled all classes. Those on campus are asked to remain where there are, lock their doors and stay away from windows. Persons off campus are asked not to come to campus."

Fourth email sent at 10:53 a.m.:

Subject: Second Shooting Reported; Police have one gunman in custody

"In addition to an earlier shooting today in West Ambler Johnston, there has been a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall.

"Police and EMS are on the scene.

"Police have one shooter in custody and as part of routine police procedure, they continue to search for a second shooter.

"All people in university buildings are required to stay inside until further notice.

"All entrances to campus are closed."</blockquote>
<p>If the gunman was at large, why on earth wasn&#39;t the campus in lock-down mode sooner? Why didn&#39;t they have any other form of mass broadcast, apart from the campus-wide email?</p>
<p>At minimum, the campus should have had an emergency PA system. I don&#39;t care if you want to use shootings or tornados or any other excuse for making the investment, but every campus in America should have a basic PA system for any potential civic emergency.</p>
<p>And I know I&#39;ve said this each time a disaster has happened over the last couple of years, but why the hell don&#39;t we have an emergency SMS broadcasting tool that can be used to send warnings to every cell phone in a given area or to a given group? Please don&#39;t take this as yet another pitch for people to use Twitter or Jaiku or Mozes, because frankly I don&#39;t care what tool people use, as long as it&#39;s reliable, easy to manage and secure - and Twitter doesn&#39;t exactly meet those needs yet. It&#39;s a start, but there&#39;s a long way to go.</p>
<p>Back during the Boxing Day Tsunami, the Swedish government was able to get the local phone companies to send an SMS broadcast to every one of their subscribers whose phones had recently sent out a signal emanating from Southeast Asia. While they weren&#39;t able to do it in time to save lives, it made a major difference in tracking down who survived and who didn&#39;t. If they&#39;re able to figure out a way to do that, why can&#39;t we figure out a way to allow schools and municipalities here in the US to send out emergency SMS broadcasts? There&#39;s no way I can know for sure, of course, but I would surmise that almost every student and faculty member injured or killed today had a cell phone on them when they were attacked. Imagine the difference a single text message could have made.</p>
<p>We can wait and see if some dot-com company can come up with a tool that could be jury-rigged for such purposes. Or we could get off our asses and make the necessary investments to develop an serious SMS broadcasting tool specifically designed for emergencies, both for warning the public and coordinating first responders. How many more disasters will it take before we do take the necessary action? -andy</p>
<p>Posted by acarvin at April 16, 2007 6:33 PM</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original source: <a href="http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2007/04/we_need_emergency_sms_broadcasting_tools.html">http://www.andycarvin.com/archives/2007/04/we_need_emergency_sms_broadcasting_tools.html</a></p>
<p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0</a></p>

Andy Carvin

2007-05-23

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0

eng

Virginia Tech Massacre

Monday, April 16, 2007

My heart and prayers go out to all of the families involved in the senseless shootings at Virginia Tech. My understanding is that 33 individuals lost their lives in the massacre. What a tragedy! There is noting I can do or say that will make things any easier for those involved. I&#39;m sure that we will hear gun control advocates ranting and raving about this unfortunate event demanding stricter gun control laws, but the gun(s) didn&#39;t do the killing, an individual pulled the trigger. Most likely, a very troubled individual planned and carried out the killings without remorse.

I have been keeping up with the reports all day and I have heard various takes on the situation. A lawyer was interviewed and suggested that the person that did the killing probably played games like "Grand Theft Auto." Personally, I don&#39;t see the validity of such games in the first place. I have a much easier time justifying gun ownership than I do allowing such games to be sold in mainstream America. What do they teach our children?

My wife and I were discussing these type games and she said that she had 4th graders that were already playing them. I can&#39;t imagine allowing a 4th grader to play such a game. 4th graders are not mature enough to play them. I&#39;m not mature enough to play them nor do I have the desire. And the really bad thing is that when she asked how they got these games, some said that their parents bought them. I don&#39;t understand this. I just think that these violent immoral games hurt our society and as a result individuals place little or no value on human life. How sad!

Fantasy games even the violent ones are just that fantasy. They do not resemble any form of true reality. I can justify these fantasy games with magic and dragons. I even like playing some of them. But these fantasy games are a far cry from games like "Hit Man" or "Grand Theft Auto". I don&#39;t foresee anyone turning into a dragon and devouring a class of innocent students. But I also believe in the freedom that our nation was founded on. As such, where do we draw the line? I just don&#39;t have the answers and I&#39;m heartbroken about the entire event.

Ultimately, it doesn&#39;t matter if we are for gun control or banning violent video games. Neither will bring back the students that lost their lives today. It&#39;s just all too ugly! What an unfortunate day! Once again, my heart and my prayers go out to the families. God Bless Them All!

William Bishop (Bill)

Technorati Tags: school_violence, shooting, videogames, virginiatech, lostjohns

posted by WBishop at 4/16/2007 07:21:00 PM

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Original Source: <a href="http://lostjohns.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-massacre.html">http://lostjohns.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-massacre.html</a>

Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.

William Bishop

2007-05-23

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License

eng

Force of Nature

Monday, April 16, 2007

I broke down and turned on CNN to check out coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting. I see there and elsewhere, without really knowing the details from this morning&#39;s mayhem, that the media are turning to the question of what it all means. With the help of sociologists, CNN bloviator in chief Lou Dobbs is going to scrutinize school shootings.

It&#39;s an unspeakable tragedy, of course, and what will come to distinguish it will be the awful, heartbreaking details to be revealed over the hours and days to come. But really: does this tell us anything about any aspect of our society that we didn&#39;t know before this morning? Or before Columbine? Or the Killeen, Texas, massacre? Or Oliver James Huberty&#39;s slaughter of the innocents at the San Ysidro McDonald&#39;s. Go ahead and jump in -- you can all think of an incident that fits.

I&#39;m not sure what any of these killings says, by the way, beyond the obvious: how violent the society is, how efficient firearms are at doing what they&#39;re designed to do. But regardless of the meaning, to me, these have come part of the landscape we live in, a little like earthquakes in California. You know they&#39;re coming; you know they could be devastating; but you never know when it&#39;s going to happen.

Of course, unlike earthquakes, in theory, at least, there&#39;s the hope we might be able to do something to stop random massacres. After every one, there&#39;s lots and lots of talk; Lou Dobbs and his sociologists. Then -- then we move on, till the next time.

Posted by Dan Brekke at 03:15 PM

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Original Source: <a href="http://infospigot.typepad.com/infospigot_the_chronicles/2007/04/force_of_nature.html">http://infospigot.typepad.com/infospigot_the_chronicles/2007/04/force_of_nature.html</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0</a>

Dan Brekke

2007-05-23

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0

eng

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Posted by Helena Cobban at April 16, 2007 04:33 PM

Tragedy has <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6560685.stm">struck</a> the community at Virginia Tech, our state&#39;s "other" fine flagship university, which is located around 120 miles southwest of my hometown, Charlottesville.

Apparently a single gunman went on a rampage there earlier today and killed at least 30 members of the university community-- most likely, most of them students.

Obviously, this is a truly horrible blow for all members of the community there.

Equally obviously, we know that communities throughout Iraq have been suffering blows as huge as this one-- or on occasions, even larger blows-- on a daily or almost daily basis throughout the past 3-4 years. Many communities in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from gun violence on this scale, too. And last week, Algeria, in North Africa, was the scene of two extremely lethal suicide bombings...

Can we all unite in grief together, and in sad wonder at the senselessness of ultra-lethal weapons and the tragedy of their widespread availability and use in many different parts of the world?

Can we unite in sad wonder at the depth of alienation and hopelessness that leads some people to engage in mass killings, even sometimes to the point of throwing their own lives into the project, as well?

Can we unite with a commitment to support, help, and try to repair all those bereaved by these and other acts of violence?

Can we unite around a strengthened commitment never ourselves to resort to violence, and to redouble our search for the nonviolent ways that <u>always do exist</u> to resolve any differences among us as humans?

I have only been to Virginia Tech once. It was a magical half-day I spent there, in the summer of 2005. The Friends General Conference (FGC), which is the main body of &#39;liberal&#39; north American Quakers, was holding its annual summer gathering in a small part of Tech&#39;s beautiful campus, which is built from flinty blue-grey stone in the incredibly beautiful foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I wasn&#39;t a participant in the gathering, but I made a special trip there one evening to spend a few hours with my dear friend Misty Gerner, who was then in a fairly advanced stage of her cancer. Misty, her husband, and I walked around the beautiful lawns a bit, and had dinner at a small nearby restaurant. Then Phil (the husband) left Misty and me alone a while. We walked and talked a whole lot more. She was wracked with bouts of pretty intense physical pain but her spirit was radiant.

I prefer to remember Tech&#39;s campus as the place where I talked with Misty on that sunny evening about life, death, love, God, justice, peace, and the Middle East... She died last summer. Maybe a little part of her still hovers over the Tech campus. If so I hope she can help to comfort the many shocked and bereaved people there today.

God forgive us all for having let the spirit of violence permeate our communities and animate our actions to this extent.

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Original Source: <a href="http://justworldnews.org/archives/002479.html">http://justworldnews.org/archives/002479.html</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0</a>

Helena Cobban

2007-05-23

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0

eng

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Monday, April 16, 2007

As I wrapped up my afternoon course today, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/us/16cnd-shooting.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin">my students informed me of the 31 deaths at Virginia Tech today</a>. It was the first I heard of it and so I immediately looked to the news and am now glued to the press conference airing on NBC.

It is uncanny that this shooting tragedy has occurred in the same week as Colombine, 8 years ago (the very day I was interviewing for my job here). I am not sure what to make of this event yet, other than to be utterly horrified by this event and sorrowful for the community at Virginia Tech. We don&#39;t yet know how many of the deceased are students and how many are faculty. These details are sure to emerge over time.

I am dismayed by the tone of the press, who launched into an attack of VT&#39;s President for not locking down the campus after the first shooting incident in the morning. The idea of lockdown and the idea that in the future we might have to post guards on our college campuses is frightening. This is a tragedy. This was an event that no one could&#39;ve forseen (unless I am persuaded by evidence to the contray), and to respond to this event with greater militarism on college campuses horrifies me (perhaps more than the event itself).

I will no doubt have something more to say about this event after I learn more facts and digest the coverage. In the meantime, I would appreciate any links to blogs from VT students or other bloggers covering this story.

UPDATE: From the Huffington Post
<blockquote>A White House spokesman said President Bush was horrified by the rampage and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia.</blockquote>
<blockquote>"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said</blockquote>
<p>BARF!</p><p>Posted by Aspazia at <a href="http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/tragedy-at-virginia-tech.html">Monday, April 16, 2007</a></p><p>--</p><p>Original source: <a href="http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/tragedy-at-virginia-tech.html">http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/tragedy-at-virginia-tech.html</a> </p><p>Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License</a>.</p>

Aspazia / Mad Melancholic Feminista Blog

2007-05-21

Brent Jesiek

eng

the virginia tech massacre in the media: sermons and loners

<p>Tuesday, April 17, 2007</p>
<p>Listening to the Virginia Memorial, and all I hear is: "God-given", "God bless you", "community", "strength", "prayers", "family", "sanctuary", "violated&#39;, and of course, here come the leaders of the religious communities: "children of Adam and Eve", "singularity" (yes, unbelievable), "non-violence" (thank the buddhists), "faith", "darkness of Evil", "light", "seductive temptation" etc. The Memorial really turned into a sermon.</p><p>But that&#39;s enough. I am here to try and compare the reactions, as seen in media from different continents, to the events of Virginia Tech. A reaction where it is easy to notice how, on different sides of the Earth, people are really interpreting (or trying to convince others to interpret) the story in radically different ways. Forgive me this, but you can see framing at work in crisis communications like you never see it at any other time. Here are the main points of view - soem of which are quite disturbing:<p><b>"The Loner"</b>: now, since when mentally-ill people have become "loners"? However, this is how the 23-year-old responsible for yesterday&#39;s killings has been named by - well, basically most of the people who have been asked to talk about him, and subsequently by most media outlets?</p><blockquote>Larry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech, said: "He was a loner, and we&#39;re having difficulty finding information about him." (<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6563565.stm">BBC</a>/<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266582,00.html">Fox News</a>)</blockquote>
<p>I could not find this on the Korea Herald article though - I wonder why.</p><p><b>"The sick American hater"</b>: not stated with these words, but this is how I could refrase a sentence like this:</p><p id="quote">The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was identified Tuesday as an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school&#39;s counseling service. News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic, and that he left a note in his dorm in which he railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus. (<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266582,00.html">Fox News</a>)</p>
<p>Very different is the report on the BBC (which from the very beginning tried to omit information that could encourage racial hatred):</p><p id="quote">US media reported that a "disturbing" note had been found in Cho Seung-hui&#39;s dormitory, and that he had been referred for counselling after producing "troubled" work in his creative writing class. (<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6563565.stm">BBC</a>)</p>
<p>Let me say something: I have been watching the news, and all I saw was Caucasian students crying. All I could read were comments coming from Caucasian American-born (at least that is what I can deduce from the names) students. The dead killer seems to be the only "Asian oddball" (ironically speaking, of course) on campus - now no more. That is an illusion created by the media. You really have to search and look to find some facts on international student presence on the Virginia Tech campus:</p><p id="quote">Only 7 percent of the more than 26,000 students at Virginia Tech are foreign, according to the school web site. But Chinese undergraduate and graduate students comprise nearly a third of that. (<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266509,00.html">Fox News</a>)</p>
<p>Now, if you calculate, that means that about 1,820 students at Virginia Tech are in fact international students, and that about 607 are Chinese (therefore "Asian-looking"). Why have I not seen any interviews with these students? What are their reactions to a fellow international&#39;s debacle? Can they suggest what problems he might have had (such as a strong cultural shock associated with a pre-existent - or triggered - mental illness)? Why maybe he was "a loner"?</p><p>I have plenty of experience with international students and their challenges, being one myself. Some peers, especially the ones of Asian descent, seem to be having more problems. In my university, there are about 10% of internationals, and maybe half of them, if not more, are Chinese. A quite smaller chunk are South Koreans. Our university, just like VTech, has some form of international student services - VTech is more advanced apparently, as they have an <a href="http://www.uusa.vt.edu/cranwell/programsclasses.shtml">International Centre</a>, which also offers advising services to international students. However, having worked with many of them, I can tell that often such services are inadequate, and "loneliness" (as well as heavy cultural shock) are not infrequent problems reported even (or maybe even more) by students who used such services.</p><p>Moreover: what about the mentions of debauchery? I have seen it myself - and it ain&#39;t always pleasant. When I used to live on residence, I remember drunk (or drugged) people coming down from my roof at about 2 AM. They crushed on the path below, laughed, and went away. Loud parties, where booze and drugs are abundant, are a norm on residence. Should we limit them? No, but we need to help people who are not used to this kind of situation. And with the international student population growing on North American campuses growing, we might want to think about them.</p><p><b>"The forgotten issue in American media: gun control"</b>: to find this, you need to visit forums on non-U.S. media websites, and check articles on international news outlets to see how this is an important issue related to the V Tech massacre.</p><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="http://www.april16archive.org/archive/fullsize/_42811311_firearms_deaths3_203gr.gif"></p>
<p id="quote">The risk of being killed by a firearm in the US is higher than in any other Western nation. Of countries outside war zones, the risk is greatest in South Africa, according to a United Nations report. (<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6562529.stm">BBC</a>)</p>
<p id="quote">"No society that feeds its children on tales of succesful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded" Margaret Mead. A society that feels the need to arm itself with lethal weapons for protection from society, is no society at all. It&#39;s all about fear. Steve, Livingston, <a href="http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?threadID=6121&&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;&edition=2&ttl=20070417193257">Recommended by 49 people</a></p>
<p>Apparently, the rest of the world can see that, no matter the pain a mentally ill young person goes through (and which, given the killer&#39;s past action, must have been significant), access to automatic army-type weapons, deregulation of access to weapons, and the U.S. "gun culture" really are the main cause behind - classroom - shootings.</p><p>Posted by steppen wolf at 11:43 AM</p><p>--</p><p>Original Source: <a href="http://skeptalchemist.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-massacre-in-media-sermons.html">http://skeptalchemist.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-massacre-in-media-sermons.html</a></p><p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada</a></p>

steppen wolf

2007-05-21

Brent Jesiek

eng

Fun Facebook in Juxtaposition with Virginia Tech Tragedy

Friday, April 27, 2007

Early Monday morning Toronto, April 16; very nice day, it&#39;s spring at last - you can feel it in the air - maybe the oxygen levels are up a little - there&#39;s a craziness in the air, a frenetic kind of feeling...

I punched the computer; threw on the radio; and began to create coffee.

I prime my story-writing brain with <a href="http://www.npr.org/">National Public Radio</a>; but soon the voices will be in the back of my head, and I&#39;ll be blogging down a pathway in search of a twig.

The twig appeared on NPR, news at 10:00; a shooting at Virginia Tech, a lock-down, nothing more...

I have been interested in the phenomena of the serial and mass murderers since the 1970&#39;s - when a peer of mine took a hunting rifle to school in a nearby town.

In the early eighties <a href="http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/memorial2?q=Elliott%20Leyton&domains=mun.ca&sitesearch=mun.ca">Elliott</a> <a href="http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/memorial2?q=Elliott+Leyton&domains=mun.ca&sitesearch=mun.ca">Leytons </a>excellent work, &#39;Hunting Humans&#39; came out; and I gave it a read. I have followed the science of profiling with interest ever since. The most strange and distorted individuals, sometimes offer the most interesting reflections of a culture.

The X-files, the 1990&#39;s TV series, starred David Duchovny as Fox Mulder, FBI profiler. The shows writers used up-to-date theory and research to punch up the script. One of my favorites.

I knew right away this was my twig - I also knew this was going to be a lousy day. As a writer though, it would be a rewarding one.

I knew a fast breaking story like this one could change the way news is consumed. In the San Francisco earthquake of 1989, CNN went live for at least 12 hours (I feel asleep), until the next morning. It was the first time a network had done this kind of news coverage. CNN&#39;s next big gig was the 1991 war with Iraq. Brought to you live; with the CNN correspondent sending video as American Bombs rained down around him; and anti-aircraft tracer fire lit the sky at mid-night.These two events took CNN from small player to a major in the news business.

Now perhaps the Internet was about to experience a similar metamorphosis.

My plan was to watch a national story unfold in real time on the Internet, and write about the experience.


So I click on my FireFox icon, and Boolean search: Virginia + Tech + Blogs.

I&#39;ve found the &#39;Blog &#39;O&#39; Sphere&#39; is a good place to find citizen journalists close to the scene as a story is breaking - like Baghdad Blogger in 2003 and the Blogs out of Beirut, under Israeli siege in the summer of 2006.

Interesting, No Bloggers, No MySpace...

List, List, List. Common thread, come on. What&#39;s common other than VTech?

Facebook! Everyone at Virginia Tech is on Facebook!

So I joined.

Apparently, so did a &#39;<a href="http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=facebook.com/">million</a>&#39; other people.

I&#39;m exploring its Web 2.0 possibilities now.

Yin & Yang, Dam Yin & Yang.



mh

Posted by Michael Holloway at 4/27/2007 06:55:00 PM

Original Source: <a href="http://filter--blog.blogspot.com/2007/04/fun-facebook-rises-out-of-tragedy-at.html">http://filter--blog.blogspot.com/2007/04/fun-facebook-rises-out-of-tragedy-at.html</a>

Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License</a>.

Michael Holloway

2007-05-19

Brent Jesiek

eng