Below is an account of what recently happened to one of our tall club friends. Long story short, he was the victim of what was essentially a random beating. The guy in question is 7'3", and I sincerely doubt he would have any inclination to be malicious in any way. A random, unprovoked attack. From the perspective of the assailant, in an economy like this, I suppose he could have been feeling some anxiety over job loss, or something similar, but it's still inexcusable by virtue of being random. Are people who lose their jobs and then target their former employers for violence any better? Not really. It's still senseless.

Last week tuesday I was on campus coming from a 3pm departmental meeting of computer people which when over at 4 I stayed a little longer to ask some questions and then headed out around 4:10 with umbrella. Around 4:15 I arrived at one of the campus's protected road crossings'and the southbound row of cars stopped - I proceeded across noticing the northbound car was playing games with stopping and when my toe crossed the line, he swerved away from me and went through. But he still was almost in my lap. My plastic and cloth umbrella came down on the rear of his car not doing any damage.I crossed to the other side. Moments later he stopped 2-3 car lengths ahead and in a hiss fit I could see was not happy though nothing had happened to his car. Fortunately he did not have a gun. The thought of preparing to kick damage at him (not big or tall) crossed my mind but he apparently sucker punched me and I passed out. According to witnesses (who of course also didn't raise a finger of resistance) he proceeded to stomp my face, neck back and both feet before taking off. I lay in the rain there a while before I was picked up. (There are some crazy people in our society) I was awake when the ambulance picked me up and I had multiple interviews with my colleagues from University Police. At that time there was no record of the licence plate and one of the cameras in the vicinity was in telephoto mode pointing at the wrong place than able to help me. Day one in the hospital I had stitches above my right eye, a compound fracture of the 5th vertebrae (at the time they were considering surgery), a fracture of the rear lower bone in the right leg, a fracture in a top of foot bone on my left foot, pain near my kidneys. My usual low blood oxygen saturation had them in a tizzy as well resulting in messing up my blood pressure meds and now resulting with 4 cans of o2 and an oxygen machine at home. I haven't used it yet today but might try it at night. Have appt with my original pulmonologist tomorrow. Anyways after multiple tests from speech therapy and other neuro testing units they let me go home yesterday 6 days into this. I had also gone into atrial fib one night and some other times, but my bed was short and they wake you up every couple hours, so you can't relax and rest up.

And then this morning I hear that in the wake of some of the shootings on college campuses, college students are campaigning in places to be able to carry concealed weapons in dorms and classrooms. Bad, BAD idea. The thought hasn't crossed anyone's mind that maybe we need to find other ways of dealing with our collective anger and anxiety?! I, for one, cannot envision anything positive coming out of allowing a segment of the population which is most notable for being either anxious or intoxicated to carry weapons wherever they pleased. This doesn't do anything to counter the prevalence of gun crime, except for raising the specter that more sorority girls would end up dead because one of these vigilantes went off in a fit or rage. As I have noted before, one of the ways that the current economic climate will probably change America is that people will die, one way or another, predominantly, I suspect, through lack of health insurance. But random killings will undoubtedly occur. If it comes down to the idea that police need to be able to do their job more efficiently, and more effectively, so be it. But LET them! And don't exacerbate the overall situation by letting your own emotions get the best of you. Easier said than done, yeah, I know. And, yeah, cops are human too, subject to traffic jams, emotional responses including the natural one to protect themselves, and having to process what's going on before them at lightning speed but if you can't say anything else about a cop on duty, at least he or she is sober, which may be more than one can say for the people they're dealing with. Kim Jong Il satisfies the world's need for insane all by himself, he doesn't need help from all the rest of us. I also understand that, having been engaged in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan, fewer soldiers are coming home dead, but more are coming home maimed, physically and emotionally. I can see where that would lead people, in many cases, to contemplate irrational acts. That still leaves a pretty large slice of the population who, although they may have lost a job, or be under stress from having to take care of an aging parent, can handle the issues they face with creativity and industry. Granted, there's still a finite market for anything being possible, but we've all got a space to fill. Do we calculate? Do we process? Do we sell? Do we teach? Do we inspire? America is famous for the industry of its citizens, and using it positively, unless called upon to do otherwise, is at the heart of our greatness. I fail to see the point of being the Land of the Free and the Home of the Dead.

Historically, I suppose that almost sounds un-American; the Colt (revolver) supposedly "made every man 6 feet tall." We are the unquestioned home of drag racing--1/4 mile, and the competition is over, and may the fastest man win. Speaking of racing, yes, we do have 12-and-24-hour endurance races in America (at Sebring and Daytona, respectively,) but the followers are cult-like in their allegiance. By comparison, the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France is one huge carnival, and everyone is invited; and a lot of people show up just for the fun of it. The only thinker your average American school child knows about is Albert Einstein, and I think that's only the case because his ideas were so all-conquering that he takes his place as THE thinker of all time. Not to say that there weren't other thinkers, but we lampoon Descartes by following up "To be is to do" with "Doo be doo be doo." (Sinatra) Everyone else is essentially pigeonholed into an academic black hole, never to be contemplated by the average person again, upon receipt of the college degree that serves only to ensure future financial security. (Which, of course, it frequently doesn't, as many are painfully aware.) Which comes back to the idea that success is about how much industry, and how much thought, you're willing to put into the idea of having a positive influence on society at large. Even if the idea isn't necessarily about solving our problems, so much as allowing us a way to either forget about, or re-process our common woes; would as many people play Monopoly if it wasn't fun? Think about it; this is a game that not only offers us the chance to be "rich" by virtue of making the right decisions about how we spend our money, but penalizes us for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or just having gotten a bad dice roll. But it still manages to be fun. Perhaps it's more quaint now, than it is current and edgy, like it was when it came out in the 1930s, but throw in the social element of people playing it just to have a little fun together, and it can still be a big time.

Perhaps there is something to the idea that America was essentially founded on the basis of who we conquered; Europeans, notably the Spanish Conquistadors, got the ball rolling by subduing Caribbean islanders. We followed that up by conquering African-Americans in their own country, to fulfill our collective need to get our dirty work done. Native Americans? They turned out to pretty much just be in the way of our conquest, despite the fact that they had been on the continent for thousands of years prior to the Europeans "discovering" America. And, no, it's not the only instance of conquest throughout the course of history, conquest has gone on for a long time. But rarely has it meant so much to what a culture is, for better or worse.