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Since 1994, this is the 1591st issue of Randy Cassingham’s...
| 8 December 2024: Pirates of the Silicon Valley | Copyright ©2024 https://thisistrue.com |
Other Good Reading: I finally got my blog post published Monday that I’ve been promising — about a little-known figure in the history of the personal computing revolution. It’s actually only Part 1: more is coming, but I think you’ll find this interesting. Dan Sokol: a Barely Known Pioneer.
That’s Not What Parents Do: Ronnie Strickland was a teacher at Hoggard High School in Wilmington, N.C., from 1977 until January 1, 2009, when he retired. Part of his duties was being the school’s volleyball coach, and he continued as coach even after he retired, until 2021, when charges surfaced that he’d had sex with two 16-year-old female students — one in 1980, on the girl’s 16th birthday, and the other over a 9-month period from 1983 to 1984. Strickland, now around 70 years old,went on trial this year for “sexual acts of a custodian with a minor.” (Or, as it was put in his arrest warrant, Strickland “assumed the position of a parent”.) After the prosecution laid out the state’s case against the former teacher, his lawyer got up and moved for dismissal: at the time of the alleged crimes, he pointed out, there was no law in North Carolina prohibiting such conduct. The judge agreed that there is such a law now, but wasn’t then, and dismissed the case. (RC/WCET Wilmington)...You might think his lawyer was brilliant. Strickland might think his lawyer should have made that motion at his preliminary hearing in 2021.
These Are Not the Voyages: Beda Koorey gets billed for tolls. She gets tickets: “red light, speeding, parking, school zone,” she says. The citationsarrive at the 76-year-old’s Huntington, N.Y., mailbox from places around the United States where she denies she’s been driving. “I don’t have a car, I don’t drive. Those plates were turned in,” she says. The plates in question bore the number of the Starship Enterprise. And while her NCC-1701 plates were issued by the state of New York, fake plates with the same number can be purchased online. The fake plates cost $15; Koorey’s tickets and tolls have gotten into five digits. New York’sDepartment of Motor Vehicles says its database no longer links Koorey to the iconic number, and argues that updating the databases used by other states is a matter for those states to address. Legislators and a lawyer got on the issue after it hit television. (AC/WCBS New York) ...Hit television is where this started.
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Ashes to Forests: A new study has confirmed that parts of Mount St. Helens in Washington are faring much better because of a small project. Two years after the volcano’s massive eruption decimated 135 square miles of forest, the landscape “contained no measurable carbon or nitrogen.” Scientists transported a group of gophers from Butte Camp on the southern face to Pumice Plain on the north. One day later, the gophers were collected and returned home. When the scientists came back sixyears later, they found 40,000 plants in the areas where the gophers had been digging, while nearby areas remained desolate. And the impact has continued to compound. “Who would have predicted you could toss a gopher in for a day and see a residual effect 40 years later?” said microbiologist Michael Allen of the University of California, Riverside, and one of the study’s authors. The study credits a beneficial fungus in the gophers’ fur, along with their constant digging to break up the ash onthe surface. Lead researcher Mia Maltz says the study will inform future work in recovering from disasters like this. “We can mimic gophers by scarifying soils or digging with a gardening tool (hoe), and adding in local spores and soil from undisturbed ecosystems,” she said. (MS/NPR) ...Or they could just toss in a few gophers.
Topped Off with Christmas Pudding: Michelin-starred chef Tommy Banks of North Yorkshire, England, baked 2,500 pies for a Christmas fair and had them all loadedinto a refrigerated van for delivery. The van was stolen. Police recovered it, but the vehicle was trashed and the pies ruined. “A van is a van, but the amount of work that goes into making pies is huge,” the chef said. After reading a news story about the incident, Joshie Harris, 11, typed a message to his father: “I see sad man, pies finished.” Joshie is autistic, and non-verbal, said his father, Dan, “and it blew my mind that he had that kind of comprehension. It makes me incredibly proudthat he could read the sentiment of the news article and understand that the man was sad.” The boy loves to cook, and immediately set about helping the chef replace them. Dan will drive him and his pies to the fair in York — about 125 miles — to deliver them. Should Tommy Banks not be able to use them for the market at the fair, Dan and Joshie will deliver them to a food bank. “He wanted to show especially at Christmas that these kinds of things shouldn’t be happening,” Dan said. “Also, it showshow that even though Joshie can’t speak, he can still be an active member of society doing good.” (RC/BBC) ...A good number of people who can speak can’t meet that standard.
Sadly, No More than the Few Hundred Thousand who Came Before
Boynton Beach Woman Hopes Death of Husband and Daughter Helps Curb DUI
WPBF West Palm Beach (Fla.) headline
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This Week’s Contributors: MS-Mike Straw, AC-Alexander Cohen, RC-Randy Cassingham.
Stories This Week were Written/Edited in the Dominican Republic.
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When I Chose the Headline of the Week, I wasn’t sure about the slug that I put above it, so I popped over to Perplexity.AI to do a little research. Here are my questions, and the answers:
In automotive history to today, about how many deaths have been caused by drunk drivers?
Drunk driving has been a persistent and deadly problem in automotive history. While exact historical figures are not available, we can estimate the scale of the issue based on recent statistics:
- In recent years, drunk driving has caused approximately 10,000 to 13,000 deaths annually in the United States(1)(2).
- From 2010 to 2019, there was an average of 10,268 fatalities each year due to drunk driving(5).
- The number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities has decreased from 41% of all crash deaths in 1985 to 31% in 2021(1).
- In 1985, 18,125 people were killed in alcohol-impaired crashes(5).
- Over the past four decades, there has been a significant improvement. The Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility states that drunk driving fatalities on U.S. roadways have decreased 36% since 1982(1).
Given these statistics, it's reasonable to estimate that hundreds of thousands of deaths have been caused by drunk drivers in automotive history. However, due to improvements in safety measures and awareness, the annual death toll has decreased significantly compared to earlier decades.
Recent Trends
While the exact total number of deaths caused by drunk drivers throughout automotive history is not available, the persistent nature of this issue and the high annual death tolls suggest that the cumulative number is tragically high, likely in the millions when considering global statistics over many decades.
- In 2021 and 2022, more than 13,000 people died in alcohol-related crashes each year(2)(3).
- Drunk driving deaths have increased 33% since 2019, reversing some of the progress made in previous years(2).
I noticed something about the answer, and asked a follow-up:
It appears that these statistics only address the United States. Can you extrapolate to worldwide?
Based on the available data, we can extrapolate the worldwide impact of drunk driving fatalities:
- Globally, approximately 1.3 million people die in road traffic accidents each year(4).
- A weighted average of 21.8% of road deaths worldwide are estimated to be alcohol-related, which translates to around 273,000 alcohol-related traffic fatalities annually(1).
- However, this figure is likely an underestimate due to underreporting of alcohol-related crashes and casualties(1).
- Some studies suggest that alcohol-related road fatalities could account for 17% to 28% of all global road traffic deaths(1)(4).
Considering these statistics, we can estimate that the number of worldwide drunk driving fatalities ranges from 221,000 to 364,000 per year. Over the course of automotive history, this would amount to millions of deaths caused by drunk drivers globally.
It's important to note that the proportion of alcohol-related traffic fatalities varies significantly between countries. For example:
- South Africa: 58% of fatal accidents involve alcohol
- Canada: 34% of fatal accidents are alcohol-related
- United States: 31-32% of traffic fatalities involve drunk drivers
- Germany and Russia: 9% of fatal accidents are alcohol-related
- India: 5% of fatal accidents involve alcohol
- China: 4% of fatal accidents are alcohol-related(3)
These variations highlight the need for global efforts to address drunk driving, as the impact differs across regions due to factors such as legislation, enforcement, and cultural attitudes towards alcohol consumption.
References (which I didn’t check, but the nice thing about Perplexity is it does include references!):
- 2024 Drunk Driving Statistics - https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/car/drunk-driving/
- Drunk Driving Deaths Rose to 32% of All Traffic Fatalities in 2022 - https://madd.org/drunk-driving-deaths-rose-to-32-of-all-traffic-fatalities-in-2022/
- 2024 Drunk Driving Statistics: More than 13000 Deaths from Alcohol ... - https://madd.org/press-release/more-than-13000-people-died-in-alcohol-related-crashes-for-second-straight-year/
- Reducing Alcohol-Impaired Driving: Lessons from a Global Review - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK500059/
- Drunk Driving Statistics - https://www.autoinsurance.com/research/drunk-driving-statistics/
...though there were actually ten sources listed in the table, but in a format that does not allow for easy copy/paste. I asked Perplexity itself how to download a list of sources with links. “Unfortunately, there is no built-in way to easily copy a list of sources with links from a Perplexity answer,” it replied. “However, there are a few workarounds you can try” (and listed several). Seriously: “workarounds” just are not good enough. Still, it prompted me decide to use “SeveralHundred Thousand” instead of “Millions” in the slug.
Ten Years Ago in True: When someone really, really fails in a Vendetta.
This Week’s Sunday Reading: Why True was featured in a deadly serious health publication (wording which, by the way, was set up months ago, so not at all related to the top story this week). A Moment for a Serious Issue.
This Week’s Honorary Unsubscribe goes to Angela Alvarez. A singer-songwriter, Alvarez didn’t just sing songs, she provided a powerful life lesson. Her story is definitely worth your 3 minutes.
- And So Long to writer Marshall Brickman, best known for the screenplay for Annie Hall (1977, for which he shared an Oscar for best original screenplay with Woody Allen), and once the head writer for Johnny Carson, particularly writing the “Carnac the Magnificent” bits. He died November 29 at 85.
- Honorary Unsubscribe Archive.
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