Sweet victory

It has been a long winter without Jim, Pam, Dwight, Michael, Creed, Phyllis, Stanley, Angela, Kevin, Jan, Oscar, Andy, and Meredith to keep my soul warm on Thursday nights. Alas, the WGA strike is over and in honor of The Office's recently announced return on April 10th, let us celebrate with a montage of some of those fabulous clips that have entertained us along the way...

Violence among us

Last Thursday on Valentine's Day, the US had its fourth school shooting of the week. Where does this tragic product of violence come from? Is it the influence of violent movies, video games, and violent music lyrics? Does this happen as a result of broken families or because teens feel isolated as they sit on fringes of school cliques? Is it because gun owners ignorantly keep guns easily accessible to children in their homes? There is no easy answer. This issue is multi-factorial, but even so, why does this problem plague the US in exponentially higher numbers than other parts of the world? Clearly, lack of gun control is at the root of this problem. I recently saw Bowling for Columbine. Even if you don't like Michael Moore's controversial approach to film, this film does an excellent job of highlighting some of these issues. In the film, Mr. Moore states that every year, over 11,000 people die at the hands of gun violence in the US. Even in countries with a more brutal history of violence, such as Germany and England, that number is below 600. Even our neighbor to the north has about 150 gun-related deaths every year. This is huge!
I don't have any significant insight on this issue, but I think this is extremely sad. How has our constitutional right to bear arms trumped gun control and the priority of safety? How has our country turned on itself and made our neighbors, teachers, friends, and families targets? How have we made each other victims of violence in our schools and homes? Clearly we live in a broken world where the more popular choice is to fight with guns rather than with words. How do we evoke change within our schools, communities, homes, etc? How do we demonstrate an ethic of peace?