Author Archives: proprietor

Why does the nanny state interrogate my kids?

My kids went to the pediatrician for their annual check up.  We were trying a new one since we had good reviews about one who was only about 20 minutes drive away compared to 40 minutes for the old one.  With any new doctor-patient situation, we had to fill out tons of paperwork and the kids were weighed, measured, etc.

Then the questions started.  Some were for me, and some were for my kids.  All of the questions asked of me were what I would consider standard questions, but the ones for the kids were a little strange to me.  Keep in mind that this was a doctor’s office, and for a well-visit, not an ER visit with bruising or obvious signs of abuse.

So they asked my kids “Do you eat fresh fruits and vegetables?”  One of my sons knew what was going on, and answered in the affirmative.  “Do you get enough to eat?”  Apparently the consensus was that we don’t feed them pizza enough.  Whatever.  Then a question that drew my ire.

“Does your family have any guns in the house?”  I tried to get their attention and play it off as a joke question by telling them to show the nurse their guns, by flexing.  However, the kids weren’t that swift on the uptake, and told the nurse that not only did we have guns in the house, they had a gun.  That is actually true, I did get them a small .22 to teach them to shoot, but they don’t have access to it or the ammunition.  Now I don’t like the question of what guns I have at the home getting out;  I’d like to keep such information surprises for any intruders, but I didn’t like the way the questions were going.  Last time I checked, I had a right to keep and bear those and other arms I may have.  Why is that a health issue?  How is that any of the medical system’s business?  They didn’t ask if I had books in the house, or a snake (we don’t), or birds (can’t they make people sick sometimes?).  I thought I’d do a little research about these guns.

What I discovered is that the nanny-state nurses should have asked me if I have a swimming pool, as far more children die by drowning than by guns, even when suicides are included.  Using the CDC statistics for the ages from 0 to 9, (the range that includes my kids) from 1999-2007, I found that 1250 were killed by firearms, for a rate of .35 per 100,000.  For comparison, falls claimed 743 victims, with a rate of .20, and poison killed 977 kids, for a rate of .27.  What was far more dangerous?  Drowning claimed 6514 children, for a rate of 1.79 per 100,000.

These statistics are for young kids.  When you look at the data for older kids, all the way to age 19, drowning claims 10,932 for a rate of 1.48, and firearms kill 27,270.  But of those, 17,351 are homicides.  The accidental firearms deaths were 1515, or a rate of .21, and suicides were 7765 for a rate of 1.05.  Now I don’t want to question if those suicides wouldn’t have happened if a gun wasn’t available.  There is no way to know that, and there are plenty of ways to kill yourself:  pills, hanging, letting your mother-in-law drive, noodling, defenestration, even drowning.

The point here is that for young children, drowning is far more likely to kill them than firearms, so it would seem that the nurse should have asked about a pool before she asked me about firearms, unless there was some agenda here by someone.  For older children, suicides are still a danger, so it is important to have a healthy relationship with them.  And of course, teach your kids the safe way to handle guns, and don’t allow them access to them without proper supervision and training.  After all, they need to be able to hit what they are aiming at.

It may be worth your time to teach them  the answer to questions like “do your parents have guns in the home?” by teaching them to flex, and say “yeah–these guns.”  Or even “They’re right here–why don’t you ask  them?”

What do you think?  Is this another example of the nanny state gone crazy?

How to use Windows-style file names having spaces when using Linux commands

Here’s a quick thing that might help someone out.

Here’s the scenario:  you have a home or work network that has both windows computers and linux computers.  Some of the directories are the windows-style and contain spaces, such as “My Documents”.  This is fairly common, especially as some networks use windows workstations but a linux server.

The problem comes in when you are attempting to access directories or files from the command line in linux.  If you type:

cd My Documents

you will get something like this in return:

bash: cd: My: No such file or directory

There is a very easy solution:  simply enclose the directory or file name containing spaces in single or double quotes.  For example,

cd 'My Documents'

works like a charm.  Remember when you are using linux systems that all entries in the command line are case sensitive, so

cd 'my documents'

is not the same as

cd 'My Documents'

There is another way that will work.  You can use the “\” character to escape the space.  Note that this will work for other special characters in file or directory names also.  In the case of a directory or file name containing spaces, the space constitutes a special character, so

cd My\ Documents

will work fine as well.

I hope this will help someone and save you time.  I know this is an irritating part of working on a network that has both windows and linux computers, but it isn’t really that big of a problem if you are armed with a little knowledge.