Heh, heh. Weird as it might seem, Deb, you just get used to it. You can't
spend your time here walking around thinking about the chances of catching a
stray bullet, any more than you can think about the chances of dying in a
car accident every time you drive somewhere (which is a lot more likely).
It's like going to India and spending all you time freaked out about cobras
-- guns, for the moment, just come with the territory here. The U.S. has
lots to offer in good and fun weirdnesses to make up for the bad and scary
weirdnesses, anyway.
Oh, and I think I read yesterday that 373 men and one woman have been
executed in the U.S. since 1977. And gun homicides per year? The figure
10,000 sticks in my mind, for some reason. Not sure that's accurate, but it
sounds about right. A few hundred die in D.C. each year alone, as I recall
from when I lived there.
___________________________________________
Alex (ablock@facstaff.wisc.edu)
ale, beer. Both words are more than 1,000 years old, and seem originally
to have been used as synonyms for the liquor made from fermented malt.
They were distinguished when _beer_ was appropriated to the kind brewed
with an infusion of hops, first imported in the 16th c. This distinction
has now disappeared; _beer_ has become a generic word comprising all malt
liquors except stout and porter, though brewers still call some of their
products _ales_, especially with a distinguishing adjective, e.g. _pale_,
_brown_, _rustic_, _audit_. In ordinary use, as at table, _beer_ is the
natural word; _ale_ has a flavour of genteelism.