A thing rarely seen & My Thoughts.

"XJDano" (xjdano)
07/11/2016 at 07:52 • Filed to: None

That armed robbery of the Pokemon GO players happened in my town. Also not in national news, an area officer did a routine traffic stop, on the way back to his car after getting license the guy ambushed the officer with a gun and critically wounded him.

I asked my wife this morning, why did we even have children? But we can only do the best we can to raise our children up to be good people and respect others, no matter what stereo types are out there.

DISCUSSION (16)

OPPOsaurus WRX > XJDano
07/11/2016 at 08:02

I’ve asked myself the same question.

I passed one of those on a small used lot. I wanted to ask about it but all 4 tires were flat. I was guessing it hasn;t moved in a long time.

KatzManDu > XJDano
07/11/2016 at 08:08

The last Lincoln like that I saw, the guy was up to no good. We couldn’t figure out if he was a drug dealer or a pimp (maybe both?)

Why does that look like Indianapolis in the background?

E90M3 > XJDano
07/11/2016 at 08:08

Well, the nut never falls too far from the tree. After living alone for almost 3 years now, I go home and I’m like oh so that’s why I do that. I probably got about 75% of my habits and my beliefs from my parents. I’m sure your kids will be fine.

XJDano > KatzManDu
07/11/2016 at 08:11

South StLouis City.

Under_Score > XJDano
07/11/2016 at 08:24

I still see several of these trucks. I even saw one yesterday.

Dru > XJDano
07/11/2016 at 08:25

I heard about the Pokémon GO robbery. Didn't hear about the officer bein ambushed.

jariten1781 > XJDano
07/11/2016 at 08:36

No major powers wars, no itchy trigger fingers over the MAD button, and violent crime is literally 1/3 what it was in the 80s/early 90s. I think they’ll be fine. Things can legitimately get three times worse than they are now and they’ll just then be on par with when you were (likely) raised.

Gallup does an interesting analysis of ‘crime rate vs. perceived crime rate’ and pretty much since 2001 60-70 percent of folks believe that it is getting worse year over year, but with very few exceptions that’s the opposite of truth. I think it’s just purely media saturation. Today, we think of every crime across the nation (and to some extent, crime in similar nations) as happening in our backyards just based on our access to information. It’s been historically true that when a major crime that makes a news splash in our local communities occurs that people believe ‘crime has gone up’ even though a single data point is not particularly relevant as to likelihood. Now, with instant access to the entire western world’s news via the internet, people think of the entire nation the same way that they used to think of their local communities. There’s no longer the filter where the local paper’s editor would select from the thousands of stories to pick one for the ‘Nation’ section of the paper...instead, anyone can go to what would have been page 4 of the Albuquerque (or whatever) paper and read it.

It’s a curious phenomenon and you really have to take two steps back, remove the emotions, and parse it coldly...but we’re really living in the safest time (crime-wise) since the post-WWII era, and the safest time ever if you account for the possibility of no-shit major warfare.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/179546/am…

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > XJDano
07/11/2016 at 08:51

Statistically, crime is the lowest it’s ever been. It’s just that news coverage has increased and become more “shocking” with the 24 hour news and click bait type journalism.

Honeybunchesofgoats > XJDano
07/11/2016 at 08:58

I’ll be honest, I won’t bring new life into a world where Mark LTs are still on the road.

XJDano > Under_Score
07/11/2016 at 09:18

To be fair, I saw one a few weeks ago in a Walmart lot in the middle of IL. Was less of a looker than this one.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > jariten1781
07/11/2016 at 11:35

That was really well written and could probably even be it’s own stand along post!

Good research and thanks for sharing it

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > XJDano
07/11/2016 at 11:36

While I like these, I prefer the Mark LT because the Blackwood is RWD only and I’d prefer a 4x4 option.

jariten1781 > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner
07/11/2016 at 12:15

Thanks, but it was just a fallout of things going on, not really a lot of effort. My wife and I were chatting last yearish and having the same ‘man, everything is terrible’ conversation. I went to the FBI’s site to pull the actual stats just to see how much worse it had really gotten and they had a graph showing what amounts to a precipitous drop in crime since I was a kid. Hrmm...checked around to see if it was just an aberration and nope...pretty much everyone who pulled stats in every way showed pretty much the exact same thing.

Odd, called up my dad. He’s extremely internet savvy for his generation but he doesn’t have it injected into every fiber of his being like we do. His opinion was pretty much...’what are you talking about? Things are great compared to how it used to be’. I mentioned the Ferguson/Baltimore stuff that was going on at the time and his response was ‘Well, that stuff always goes on, but it’s way less prevalent than when I was growing up’. He mentioned the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which he was apparently in the crowd at and told me to go refresh my memory. Other than the dated uniforms the police were wearing and some odd hair styles here and there it looked just like those events taking place today except for the fact that there were actual soldiers with freaking bayonets corralling the protesters. Seriously, if you aren’t aware or haven’t looked into it in a while just do an image search for ‘1968 Democratic National Convention’ and take a look. He also mentioned that rhetoric hasn’t changed much or has even gotten softer...that when he was younger, through the 80s there was a true feeling that national leaders might be assassinated by their opponents and that that would be incredibly shocking if it happened today despite the words that they bandy about.

So I had to take a step back...just did a quick look around for ‘perception’ (forgot what I actually searched for) and found the Gallup survey....and ta-da...here we are.

It’s so strange that as those who came before us made the country so much safer we’ve become a so much more fearful bunch. Not really sure what to think about that. It's like a national case of anxiety disorder hitting everyone under the age of 40. I do feel bad for the kids who can’t even walk to the park alone like I did without risk of their parents being charged with neglect even though they’re literally 300% less likely to be harmed by doing so.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > jariten1781
07/11/2016 at 13:53

Man that last part is the tough one.

I feel like I’m not going to be able to just let my son go play at the park by himself in the future (he’s 3, but a 10 year old crossing zero streets should be able to go play at the park), not because I think he’ll be hurt or abducted, I think someone’s going to call the cops on me for endangerment or neglect. We have access to a park through paths and you pass over 1 dirt road with barely any traffic (there’s only about 6 houses past the crosswalk, yes the dirt road even has a crossing point)

jariten1781 > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner
07/11/2016 at 14:24

Yup, I guarantee you I would have been taken from my parents if they acted as they did back in the day in today’s world. At 8 years old I rode home on the bus and was completely autonomous until ~5:30 when Mom got off work. Had a couple rules: 1) My little brother, 6 years old, had to be with me or a known adult, 2) I had to be home by 7pm or dark, whichever came earlier, 3) homework had to be done before Dad got home. That was it. So, other than in storms or the worst of winter I just went to the park, the gas station, the grocery store, whatever. Sometimes I’d drag my brother around or sometimes I’d wait till a bit after 5 and hand him off to my mom when she got back then go out all alone to waste time. A regular thing would be do homework on bus, drop bag off at home around 3:30, drag brother with me to gas station that was a mile or so away (required crossing a 35 mph road with no crosswalks and a dozen neighborhood streets), take back soda and candy then hang out in the cemetery while finishing it (had lots of shade), then go to the park and put my brother at the play gym while I went and joined whatever game was going on (‘tackle the man with the ball’ was a favorite, probably totally banned these days).

The modern headline writes itself “CPS called after bruised elementary students found abandoned, alone, at cemetery with only soda and candy”.

When do kids learn autonomy today? I wonder if this attitude is what lead to the crazy number of adult children living at home. There was an article, I think it was NYTs, a couple years ago that stated 60% of adults not in school >21 born in the late 80s/early 90s lived at home or received 'significant financial support' from their parents. It was a step function change too because at the same point in their lives children born in the late 70s/early 80s <10% had the same parental crutch. The article blamed it on student debt...but I'm not so sure.

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > jariten1781
07/11/2016 at 14:50

I think a large portion of that has to do to with the wild and unchecked increase of college tuition. I know some people who’s student loans just kicked in at 800 a month. That’s more than what my first apartment cost when I got out of college in 2008. I was lucky enough that my family was able to cover the insanely high cost of tuition and that I got a job in my career field 3 months after graduating. I wouldn’t have been able to live on my own with 800 a month in student loans. We pay ~250 a month for my wife’s student loans. We got married the weekend after she graduated (I graduated a year before her) and I can’t imagine the struggles we would’ve faced if we both had over 500 a month to pay, we certainly wouldn’t be in our second house by now.