In the wake of the recent killings in California that have grabbed the public’s attention, there has been an odd trend in the debate over the motives of the killer. Was it misogyny? Or was it some other cause such a mental illness or video games or films or even homosexuality? For some reason, there has been a reluctance in some circles (especially Fox News) to blame the killer’s actions on his attitudes towards women and shift the focus to these other factors.
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Apart from any constitutional questions involved, I think reasonable people can and do disagree on whether it is acceptable for private individuals to own guns. I myself over time have shifted my view away from totally opposing private gun ownership except under exceptional circumstances to thinking that people do have a right to own guns. But given that it is a lethal weapon, they have to earn the right to do so by showing that they understand the responsibility of it. This would require training in its use and certification of competence.
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The recent botched attempts at executing prisoners on death row has resulted in some confusion as to what to do next. The problem stems from the fact that the cocktail of drugs that had traditionally been used are no longer freely available, partly because the countries where they are produced have refused to allow them to be shipped to the US for use in executing people and partly because the drug companies that produce them are fearful of the bad publicity that would result if the public discovered that they are being used not to treat people but to kill them.
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I was involved recently in organizing a program at our university to highlight the problem of human trafficking. That label immediately conjures up the notion of women and children being forced into the sex trade and this is undoubtedly a major problem. But there is also human trafficking of people and children for labor, who end up working in appalling conditions in foreign countries and cannot escape.
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The National Spelling Bee contest has been going on since 1925. I went and looked at how the difficulty of the winning words has changed over the years. These are the last words that the winner has to get correct in order to clinch the championship, after all the other contestants have struck out.
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As has been the custom for many years, Asian-Americans (and especially those whose ethnicity traces to the southern states of India) have dominated this contest. All others get steadily weeded out as the final rounds approach and this year was no exception with two Indian-Americans being declared joint winners.
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I have written before that I am not a fan of the national Spelling Bee contest. One reason is that the format is inherently unfair and needlessly nerve-wracking to the children taking part. The second is that it results in students pending enormous amounts of time memorizing the spelling of esoteric words that they are unlikely to ever even encounter again, let alone use them.
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Starting today I will be travelling to attend a conference and so blogging will be light and sporadic. But to tide you over the hiatus here is a photo of Baxter the Wonder Dog out in the back yard enjoying the spring weather over the Memorial Day weekend.

Everyone is weighing in on the killing spree indulged in by an emotionally disturbed young man who was seething at the fact that women were rejecting him and choosing others. Since he was good-looking (at least from the photos) one can only surmise that his personality gave clues to women that they should steer clear of him.
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One advantage of being older is that you are likely to have encountered many situations where your stereotypes of people have been confounded. But try as I might to not judge people by their appearance, it is hard, and it is good to be periodically reminded of the trap.
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