ABC's evening national news, Friday, February 6, 2004: The United States has 53,285,336 children. Among these kids, in the last year counted: 6001 died in motor vehicle accidents. 1109 deaths from drowning’s 586 were killed by fires and burns 45 were murdered in the course of 115 abductions per year; this is a total of less than ONE child murdered by abduction, per STATE, with 120 times that number killed per state by motor vehicle per year. These statistics, if one can trust ABC news team sources, would seem to indicate that there is a slight overemphasis on, and news reporting of, child abductions. It startles me that the statistics on abductions are so low, given the looks of milk cartons and especially local newscasts in this country. (Auto accidents have killed more than twice as many people in the US as have been killed in all the wars in US history.) However, it's crucial to realize that those newscasts are brought to us by the likes primarily of General Motors, Ford, Lexus, VW, Toyota, Honda, Exxon, Shell, Midas, AAMCO, ad nauseum. Stories of childhood abductions make for sensational news, yet blood on car bumpers and pavement is so common as to be deemed not newsworthy, unless the numbers on any given accident are particularly high. Children are prevented from getting healthy exercise outdoors as parents are traumatized and frozen by these damn sensational newscasts. The children end up hopelessly obese and needing glasses from playing constantly with indoor only video games but the parent then feels comfortable that the child is "safe" indoors. It's interesting to note the sales of video and computer games now gross more revenue than all Hollywood movie box office receipts. I'm not sure where the notion of entitlement to feel comfortable at all times comes from, but it has nothing to do with the real world. A week ago today, I had a healthy looking young woman over to my Baja Rockridge residence announce flatly that although she's taken personal security training, there isn't a single neighborhood in the entire half a million citizen city of Oakland (which has some fabulous highbrow neighborhoods) where she would feel comfortable walking three blocks. Where DOES this implied entitlement to feel 100% comfortable 100% of the time come from? It is surely part of the obesity crisis that is making the US the laughing stock of public health officials all over the world. Attacks on children for the things adults do tend to rub me the wrong way. Wilma Chan, my assemblyperson, made a splash of big news last week by introducing a bill to punish the child operators of those hideous, noisy, highly polluting two-stroke engine’ d motorized scooters a total of two children have been killed by in California last year. Apparently her proposals are strictly a matter of fining and regulating the kids, there was no suggestion in the newscasts of a simple ban on such ridiculously bad and dangerous motor vehicles that are incapable of even reaching speeds similar to those of a bicycle, the scooters top out at about 20-25 mph on level ground. While I applaud Chan's efforts and particularly the punishments for the kid's tendency to show off their power by deliberately sabotaging the already trivial mufflers on such motorized "vehicles," a genuine crackdown would involve outright banishment of the sales of such nuisance/gross polluting vehicles. The raw gasoline that invariably gets spilled, leaked, and burped out unburned by these toys from hell puts the kids and the local environment at major risk for heinous toxic exposure, too. As a matter of pathetic statistics, the oil industry with its ships and tank farms and gas stations manages to spill and leak directly into local environments and aquifers, the equivalent of ONE THOUSAND Exxon Valdez oil spills EVERY YEAR. (Source, Earth Island Journal, www.earthisland.org) And on an even more local level, I noticed something on my bike ride(s) up and down Oakland's Telegraph Avenue lately: A store called PRIMETIME, which specializes in selling only the most hideous artificially flavored, chemically dyed, inadvertently or deliberately genetically tampered, pesticide-ed and chemically fertilized plastic wrapped and cardboard boxed corporate food in exchange only for WIC vouchers. This company I believe made its name in selling pet food and is now trying to foist these awful unnatural foods on the poor children who subsist on WIC vouchers - the store refuses to accept cash for its "food," this is strictly a WIC operation. They do sell some refrigerated Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) enhanced milk and also room temperature eggs, but that's about it, not a single bit of fresh produce or unprocessed/organic natural food can be had from this store. Is this any way to raise healthy kids??? Between stuff like that and the toxic soup of ongoing diesel bus and unregulated or under enforced diesel truck emissions in poor neighborhoods, it is a testament to the resiliency of the human body that ANY child manages to grow up healthy in such a context. I offer a prayer of thanks to my Canadian Baptist Mother, who, thank God, did not use WIC vouchers nor smoke, drink, or use/abuse any drugs while I was in gestation. Pretty sweet considering she has finally confided I was sort of an unplanned child!!! I guess this accounts in part for my lifelong pattern of surprising folks with stuff like this. I am a childless bachelor, not the type to type up stats like this, but what the hey. I studied statistics and they are too frequently ignored or distorted but the truth resides in them, more than in rhetoric, and I believe God lives somewhere in the house of truths. "Gasoline rushes in where bicyclists fear to tread"....Jim's truth for today....Notes: *Katie Alvord, "Divorce Your Car," 2000 "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
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By James DMake-it-home-safe MANTRA: When dealing with traffic, it's better to be patient than to become a patient; AND - A Sailboat is to a Polluting Cruise Ship what a bicycle is to a smokin' Hummer. I know bikes are beautiful but I’M not backing off until bikes are bountiful and bikers have greater strength in numbers. CategoriesArchives
February 2016
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