Firearms are Third Leading Cause of Death Among US Children

Firearm related deaths are the third leading cause of death overall among US children aged 1 to 17 years and the second leading cause of injury-related death. Previous studies examined selected outcomes or certain types of firearm injuries. [...] Nearly 1300 children die and 5790 are treated for gunshot wounds each year. Boys, older children, and minorities are disproportionately affected. Although unintentional firearm deaths among children declined from 2002 to 2014 and firearm homicides ...

 Anecdote of Shamans Responding to Star Trek

DI for documenting his journey to shamanism in the 1994 book Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of African Shaman. He writes about the proverbial dive into the rabbit hole as he was studying with the elders of his community and balancing his newfound wisdom with his Western education. Some paints a picture of a different path to knowledge that contradicts the norms of Western conventions. According to him. the Dagara have no word for the supernatural. "For us, ...

 Gaming for Globalization

In today’s global society, we need games that introduce young people to their international peers and their peers’ lives all around the world. We should have games that fully represent the current scope of humanity around the globe. Let inter-ed games help liven up the history or sociology lesson and motivate players to go out and learn more by traveling and experiencing other cultures in reality. Looking to the future, I would be remiss to neglect mention of the vast potential of virtual...

 Repressive Desublimation

It refers to the kind of soft authoritarianism preferred by wealthy, consumer culture societies that want to repress political dissent. In such societies, pop culture encourages people to desublimate or express their desires, whether those are for sex, drugs or violent video games. At the same time, they’re discouraged from questioning corporate and government authorities. As a result, people feel as if they live in a free society even though they may be under constant surveillance and forc...

 Means of Quantifying Violence

Now let’s turn to the present. According to the most recent edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2,448,017 Americans died in 2005. It was one of the country’s worst years for war deaths in decades, with the armed forces embroiled in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Together the two wars killed 945 Americans, amounting to 0.0004 (four-hundredths of a percent) of American deaths that year.57 Even if we throw in the 18,124 domestic homicides, the total rate of violent ...