LINKS!

[trinityvixen]

So, I was late to work, I'm leaving early, and I'm missing lunch but? I still have all this time to blog. Wow! Maybe I'll use one of about thirty new icons I spent way too much time looking for over the weekend, too!

Have some news:

-I'm having a glass of wine when I get home today! Apparently, red or white is good for this. Meaning my preference for sweet, clear, un-headache-causing whites won't stop me from having a healthy liver. (Drinking a pitcher of margaritas in one evening will do that.)

-More than one half of all violent deaths are suicides. o.O Wow. I...wow. That's incredibly, scarily high. It's not like I advocate murder over suicide (I don't advocate either, WTF WHY DID I EVEN SAY THAT!?), but...damn. That's a lot of unhappy people who never thought they could get better, that no one was able to help. I am further saddened by the idea that not a few of these suicides were people affected by the bogus wars we're waging. God.

-I wish there were some way to give away my uterus to these people. I live in holy terror of ever getting pregnant. I'm looking at the stats on this going "Woo, just gotta make it to 35, and then it should be almost a non-issue!" They're rich, too (as evidenced by an ability to pay for IVF for nearly a decade), so they could pay me for the stupid thing. No more cramps ever, with or without the pill, and money for an organ I actively loathe and want rid of! And some really dedicated folks get something to make babies with! Win-win!

Comments

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

Wow. And I could use a good glass of wine, myself. That is cool.

Regarding suicides, I have known several, and I always wondered why I seemed to know so many. :( I guess, with statistics like that, it might just be inevitable. :( It is terribly sad. :(

And kudos to you for knowing what you want. So many people have babies because they think they are supposed to. I know the sadness of wanting to have a baby and thinking you will not be able to have one - I miscarried before we conceived my daughter, and the doctor thought that she may have been a twin and the emergency we had on an airplane while expecting her was losing the twin. It is very scary stuff, and it is so hard to go through when you really want a baby. :(
But also, it is awesome that you do not condemn people who want babies, as many women who do not wish to have a child do.

AI m babbling. Too bad I can't have wine right now. Thanks for the links.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, wine is necessary for life. Doesn't have to be "good," just has to be drinkable. Cheers!

The suicide stats scare me. They really do. Because while I confess to being enough of a defeatist that I don't believe you can save every suicide, there are so many that don't have to happen. Our infrastructure for supporting people who are depressed or chemically imbalanced was never very good. It's only gotten worse as the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps or else you are a worthless human being" rhetoric has taken hold. I know people on all sides of suicides at this point--people who tried and failed, people who succeeded, the health professionals who try, valiantly, vainly to work to save as many as they can--and it just breaks my heart.

Also: birth is scary. I'm totally impressed with people who do it and who want it. To them, I say full speed ahead! For me, not so much.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

More than one half of all violent deaths are suicides.

And that's in the US. I believe that in Western Europe, where the murder rate is much lower, suicides make up more like 80%.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Even better...

[avram]

Well, the suicide statistic you quoted doesn't actually tell you how many people committed suicide; it just tells you how common suicide is compared to homicide. As the crime rate goes down, suicides are going to make up a larger proportion of the death-by-violence numbers, even if the actual rate of suicide stays the same.

What you're actually interested in is suicides compared to population. According to that page, here are suicide rates per 10,000 population for the most recent years the WHO had statistics:

US: 22
UK: 14
Canada: 23
Switzerland: 35
France: 37
Germany: 26
Russia: 72
Israel: 12
Ireland: 19
Italy: 14

I'm sure that chart suffers from reporting bias. Iran's, Syria's, and Egypt's claimed suicide rates are unbelievably low, less than 1 per 10k.