{"id":1330,"date":"2013-07-17T08:39:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T12:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/?p=1330"},"modified":"2013-07-17T13:59:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T17:59:54","slug":"wednesday-17-july-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/2013\/07\/17\/wednesday-17-july-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, 17 July 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000099; font-family: Arial;\">08:39 &#8211;<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"> I get so tired of hearing Sharpton and the other demagogues playing the race card at every opportunity. Yes, Martin was a young black man. Yes, Zimmerman has a &#8220;white&#8221; name. But Zimmerman self-identifies as Hispanic, and is apparently of mixed white and black heritage. To attempt to portray this incident as a racially-motived killing goes beyond contemptible. In a rational world, Zimmerman wouldn&#8217;t even have been charged with a crime. It was so clearly self-defense that the police didn&#8217;t charge him for weeks, until they caved to political pressure.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Much has been made of Martin&#8217;s age and race, that he was somehow &#8220;profiled&#8221; because of them. Maybe so, but so what? It is not sexist to state that men are much more likely than women to commit violent crimes. It&#8217;s fact. It is not ageist to state that young men are much more likely than older men to commit violent crimes. It&#8217;s fact. And it&#8217;s not racist to state that black men are much more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than the converse. It&#8217;s fact. Whites are immensely more likely to be the victims of violent crime perpetrated by blacks than the converse. That&#8217;s not racism. That&#8217;s reality.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Everyone has situational awareness of threats. It&#8217;s been bred into us by millions of years of evolution. If I, as a 60-year-old white man, am walking down the street and see someone approaching me, I instinctively evaluate the situation without even having to think about it. If the person approaching is female of any age or race, the potential threat is minimal unless she&#8217;s behaving strangely. Not zero, but not of much concern. If the person approaching is male of any age or race, the potential threat is much, much greater and I am accordingly more alert. If the man is also young, I&#8217;m still more alert. And if the young man is also black, I&#8217;m still more alert. And if it&#8217;s a group of young black men rather than just one, I&#8217;m on full alert. And if the group of young black men is rowdy, I&#8217;m in DEFCON 1 and mentally prepared to engage multiple targets. And there&#8217;s nothing sexist, ageist, or racist about that.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"width: 65%; height: 3px; font-family: Arial;\" \/>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #000099; font-family: Arial;\">13:59 &#8211;<\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\"> This is very cool, at least to me. Tracking information on the two science kits I mailed Monday to the UK.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Customs Clearance UNITED KINGDOM July 17, 2013 6:14 pm<br \/>\nCustoms Clearance UNITED KINGDOM July 17, 2013 6:13 pm<br \/>\nProcessed Through Sort Facility UNITED KINGDOM July 17, 2013 6:02 pm<br \/>\nProcessed Through Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) July 16, 2013 11:06 am<br \/>\nArrived at Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) July 16, 2013 10:45 am<br \/>\nProcessed through USPS Sort Facility MIAMI, FL 33112 July 16, 2013 9:24 am<br \/>\nDepart USPS Sort Facility GREENSBORO, NC 27498 July 15, 2013<br \/>\nProcessed at USPS Origin Sort Facility GREENSBORO, NC 27498 July 15, 2013 8:07 pm<br \/>\nDispatched to Sort Facility WINSTON SALEM, NC 27106 July 15, 2013 5:33 pm<br \/>\nAcceptance WINSTON SALEM, NC 27106 July 15, 2013 4:07 pm<br \/>\nElectronic Shipping Info Received July 15, 2013<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>08:39 &#8211; I get so tired of hearing Sharpton and the other demagogues playing the race card at every opportunity. Yes, Martin was a young black man. Yes, Zimmerman has a &#8220;white&#8221; name. But Zimmerman self-identifies as Hispanic, and is apparently of mixed white and black heritage. To attempt to portray this incident as a racially-motived killing goes beyond contemptible. In a rational world, Zimmerman wouldn&#8217;t even have been charged with a crime. It was so clearly self-defense that the police didn&#8217;t charge him for weeks,<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/2013\/07\/17\/wednesday-17-july-2013\/\">&nbsp;&raquo;&nbsp;Read more about: Wednesday, 17 July 2013 &nbsp;&raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-2","category-science-kits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}