A series of related stupid questions for the day:

1. What was the document kat used to draw her diagram on?
2. What is the first word in the text from that document that appears partially in the pic? Ends in "mental."
2a. If "mental" is the entire word, was "sustainability" just a misspelling of (... or code word for) "stability?"
2b. If the conjectures of (2a) are both correct, I ask again: What was the document kat used to draw her diagram on?!
3. Is "sociodemographics" really a word? (Spellcheck: NO!)
4. Are there missing words between "They have very distinct" and "sociodemographics?" What are they?
5. What is shown in "figure 2?" Is it suitable for display at work?

The National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) Leadership Forum in Houston, Texas on Friday should be interesting.

Will they call for elementary school students to be armed in order to stop school shootings?

That might be the only thing left for them to propose in their usual line of ideas about how gun violence can be prevented.

close down schools

Could be: they're already sure education is seriously over-rated.

America worships the Constitution and Bill of Rights like the Middle East worships the Quran.

I think the Constitution and the Bill of Rights have a different dynamic than religious texts; the real danger in America is that a lot of Americans worship a much-adapted version of the Bible.

The core belief of American government philosophy (at least my version of it; many Americans very clearly do not believe this) comes from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The main things here are (1) equality and (2) the notion that governments exist to serve the interests of the people, contra to the general notion of religious government philosophy that the role of government is to force people to behave however the religious doctrine says they should.

There is an immense amount of hagiography in America about our system of government, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights ... as though we should defer to the attitudes of a bunch of privileged 18th century people, most of them slave owners.

But that's pretty obviously sophomoric, designed to keep the great unwashed masses who don't think very much from causing trouble -- maybe like Brits being schooled to be willing to die for the Queen -- ? (Hopefully they don't do that any longer ... but you do still have a Queen.)

And we actually do change the Constitution, though I doubt it will happen again in my lifetime.

And interpretation is even dynamic: even the Supreme Court Justices who pretend to want to go by the "original intent" of the drafters of the Constitution have managed to decide that the Second Amendment guarantees an inviolable right for individuals to bear arms (apparently even arms that were undreamed of in the 18th century), never mind that that was never how it was implemented during the lives of the drafters nor for two hundred years afterward.

(The Quran, just to be clear, is technically regarded as the absolute final word of God, and any effort to add to it or modify it is blasphemy: apparently after writing down his thoughts, the fairy godfather abandoned us.) (Come to think of it, I'm not sure any contemporary religion holds that there are current day prophets; Mormonism might.)