[ExI] [wta-talk] LA Times: Unlimited space for untold sorrow

[PJ Manney]

On Feb 5, 2008 4:06 PM, Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Really, if we are going to freak out about anything, it should be
> heart disease & cancer. If you want to publicise anything, forget
> homicides, put the heart disease and cancer stats on the telly each
> night. "The heart disease death toll so far this holiday season has
> climbed to 40,000 across the United States, an improvement on the same
> month last year." [4] But then, who'd want to watch that? Horrible.

My point was not at all about risk assessment.  We know human
generally stink at it and neurologically, they can't help but stink.
My point was about coming to grips with the realities of our
communities: how they succeed, how they fail and gaining the empathy
to, at a minimum, appreciate the victims' reality, or if possible, do
something about it.  And you can only do that with accurate
information.  The point of The Homicide Report is to provide missing
information -- who are ALL the people murdered daily in LA County --
and the stories behind their deaths.

To put it in a language you might better understand, accurate patterns
can emerge from a complete data set.  If you read the article, you'll
see that even the bureaucracies didn't have the complete data set.
They were as surprised by the data as the reporter.

In fact, if we based risk assessment on American media exposure in
general, you'd think the only people at risk were young, blonde women,
preferably those who made some error of judgement and died as a
consequence.  According to CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc., they seem to be
the only people who suffer from senseless deaths.  And there's a
reason for that... but I hope I don't have to explain that to you,
too.

PJ