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Prometheus 6

All respect and no restraint

When you stare into the broad open prairie, the broad open prairie stares into you

in

8 Are Slain, 5 Wounded by Gunman at Omaha Mall
By Dan Eggen and Jenna Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 6, 2007; A03

A man dressed in camouflage killed eight people and himself at a crowded Omaha department store yesterday, writing in a suicide note found by his mother that he wanted to "go out in style," according to authorities and local news accounts.

Police and witnesses said the shooter, identified as Robert A. Hawkins, fired on shoppers from a third-floor balcony of the Von Maur department store at the Westroads Mall shortly before 2 p.m. Central time.

Hawkins, 19, was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound by police, who had sealed the mall after the shootings, officials said. Two local television stations reported that the suicide note was found at his home by his mother.

In addition to the nine dead, five others were seriously wounded in the shooting, authorities said.

The rampage was the second mass shooting at a U.S. mall this year. In February, five were killed and four others were wounded at Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City. The gunman in that case was shot and killed by police.

Whitlock's response,

Whitlock's response, please...

 

Paraphrasing Nietzsche this

Paraphrasing Nietzsche this morning, P6?

 

The Omaha incident also makes me think of Dylan's old song called The Ballad of Hollis Brown about a man living on the northern prairie who was too poor to feed his wife and five children so he killed them all and took his own life.

Paraphrasing Nietzsche this


Paraphrasing Nietzsche this morning, P6?

It leapt to mind. Nietzsche is my evil persona. 

maybe this was...

... a mind control experiment gone horribly awry.  Uh, sorry, been reading 100 Bullets again...

it's the drugs....,

Of course by now you've noticed that yet another introverted teenaged boy went buckwild with a high capacity firearm. Watch the media coverage closely, because the part that won't be discussed, but which ties together all these recent mass shootings is toxic chemical stew that this boy had been fed for the past several years.

While a state ward , he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, mood disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and parent-child relations problems.

Robert Hawkins, the 19 year old who killed himself and eight other people with an assault rifle last night in Omaha, Nebraska had a history of treatment with psychiatric drugs for depression and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and was on prozac according to press reports.

Of course the headlines will once again focus on how evil and dangerous guns are, how the second amendment should be reevaluated and will once again ignore the fact that this young man was subject to dangerous brain altering chemicals for a number of years prior to this tragic incident.

Simpler than that

Just got the link via email:

http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/12/country_music_and_suicide.php

From VSL comes this list of truly weird scientific studies. My favorite was this one, which "assesses the link between country music and metropolitan suicide rates":

Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. The existence of a country music subculture is thought to reinforce the link between country music and suicide. Our model explains 51% of the variance in urban white suicide rates."

Feel free to hypothesize in the comments. I'm not sure I buy the sub-culture explanation. Personally, many of my favorite sad songs are old country tunes. (I think it has something to do with the steel guitar, which is a uniquely mournful instrument.) After a few Hank Williams' songs, I'm ready for some anti-depressants.

 

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