number twenty-three, a supervisor explained to reporters that a clerk had received papers ordering that the prisoner be sent to Oregon to serve out a long sentence for burglary and rape but, as could happen to anyone, had taken this to mean giving him back all his possessions, escorting him to the door, and recommending a good pizza place around the corner.
Even better were the sheriff’s deputies in Milwaukee who were sent to the local airport with a team of sniffer dogs to practice hunting out explosives. The deputies hid a five-pound package of live explosives somewhere in the airport and then—I just love this—forgot where. Needless to say, the dogs couldn’t find it. That was in February, and they’re still looking. It was the second time that the Milwaukee sheriff’s department has managed to mislay explosives at the airport.
I could go on and on, but I’m going to break off here because I want to see if I can get into the Pentagon’s computer. Call me a devil, but I’ve always had a hankering to blow up a minor country. It will be the perfect crime. The CIA won’t notice it, the Pentagon will notice it but will lose the records, the FBI will spend eighteen months investigating and then arrest Mr. Ed the Talking Horse, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will let him go. If nothing else, it will take people’s minds off all these other things they have to worry about.
Now here is something that seems awfully unfair to me. Because I am an American it appears that I am twice as likely as an English person to suffer an untimely and accidental death. I know this because I have just been reading something called
The Book of Risks: Fascinating Facts About the Chances We Take Every Day
by a statistical wonk named Larry Laudan.
It is full of interesting and useful charts, graphs, and factual analyses, mostly to do with coming irremediably a cropper in the United States. Thus, I know that if I happen to take up farm work this year I am three times more likely to lose a limb, and twice as likely to be fatally poisoned, than if I just sit here quietly. I now know that my chances of being murdered sometime in the next twelve months are 1 in 11,000; of choking to death 1 in 150,000; of being killed by a dam failure 1 in 10 million; and of being fatally conked on the head by something falling from the sky about 1 in 250 million. Even if I stay indoors, away from the windows, it appears that there is a 1 in 450,000 chance that something will kill me before the day is out. I find that rather alarming.
However, nothing is more galling than the discovery that just by being an American, by standing to attention for “The Star-Spangled Banner” and having a baseball cap as a central component of my wardrobe, I am twice as likely to die in a mangled heap as, say, Prince Philip or Posh Spice. This is not a just way to decide mortality, if you ask me.
Mr. Laudan does not explain why Americans are twice as dangerous to themselves as Britons (too upset, I daresay), but I have been thinking about it a good deal, as you can imagine, and the answer—very obvious when you reflect for even a moment—is that America is an outstandingly dangerous place.
Consider this: Every year in New Hampshire a dozen or more people are killed crashing their cars into moose. Now correct me if I am wrong, but this is a fate unlikely to await anyone in the United Kingdom. Nor, we may safely assume, is anyone there likely to be eaten by a grizzly bear or mountain lion, butted senseless by bison, seized about the ankle by a seriously perturbed rattlesnake, or subjected to an abrupt and startling termination from tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, rock slides, avalanches, flash floods, or paralyzing blizzards— all occurrences that knock off scores, if not hundreds, of my fellow citizens each year.
Finally, and above all, there is the matter of guns. There are 200 million guns in the United States and we do rather like to pop them
Even better were the sheriff’s deputies in Milwaukee who were sent to the local airport with a team of sniffer dogs to practice hunting out explosives. The deputies hid a five-pound package of live explosives somewhere in the airport and then—I just love this—forgot where. Needless to say, the dogs couldn’t find it. That was in February, and they’re still looking. It was the second time that the Milwaukee sheriff’s department has managed to mislay explosives at the airport.
I could go on and on, but I’m going to break off here because I want to see if I can get into the Pentagon’s computer. Call me a devil, but I’ve always had a hankering to blow up a minor country. It will be the perfect crime. The CIA won’t notice it, the Pentagon will notice it but will lose the records, the FBI will spend eighteen months investigating and then arrest Mr. Ed the Talking Horse, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department will let him go. If nothing else, it will take people’s minds off all these other things they have to worry about.
Now here is something that seems awfully unfair to me. Because I am an American it appears that I am twice as likely as an English person to suffer an untimely and accidental death. I know this because I have just been reading something called
The Book of Risks: Fascinating Facts About the Chances We Take Every Day
by a statistical wonk named Larry Laudan.
It is full of interesting and useful charts, graphs, and factual analyses, mostly to do with coming irremediably a cropper in the United States. Thus, I know that if I happen to take up farm work this year I am three times more likely to lose a limb, and twice as likely to be fatally poisoned, than if I just sit here quietly. I now know that my chances of being murdered sometime in the next twelve months are 1 in 11,000; of choking to death 1 in 150,000; of being killed by a dam failure 1 in 10 million; and of being fatally conked on the head by something falling from the sky about 1 in 250 million. Even if I stay indoors, away from the windows, it appears that there is a 1 in 450,000 chance that something will kill me before the day is out. I find that rather alarming.
However, nothing is more galling than the discovery that just by being an American, by standing to attention for “The Star-Spangled Banner” and having a baseball cap as a central component of my wardrobe, I am twice as likely to die in a mangled heap as, say, Prince Philip or Posh Spice. This is not a just way to decide mortality, if you ask me.
Mr. Laudan does not explain why Americans are twice as dangerous to themselves as Britons (too upset, I daresay), but I have been thinking about it a good deal, as you can imagine, and the answer—very obvious when you reflect for even a moment—is that America is an outstandingly dangerous place.
Consider this: Every year in New Hampshire a dozen or more people are killed crashing their cars into moose. Now correct me if I am wrong, but this is a fate unlikely to await anyone in the United Kingdom. Nor, we may safely assume, is anyone there likely to be eaten by a grizzly bear or mountain lion, butted senseless by bison, seized about the ankle by a seriously perturbed rattlesnake, or subjected to an abrupt and startling termination from tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, rock slides, avalanches, flash floods, or paralyzing blizzards— all occurrences that knock off scores, if not hundreds, of my fellow citizens each year.
Finally, and above all, there is the matter of guns. There are 200 million guns in the United States and we do rather like to pop them
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