Re: OT The Effect of Country Music on Suicide and other dangers of everyday life
John King
any good. I hate a song that makes you think that
you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good
to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too
old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly
or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or
poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard
traveling.
I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath
of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing
songs that will prove to you that this is your world
and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked
you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what
size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing
the songs that make you take pride in yourself and
in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up
for the most part by all sorts of folks just about
like you.
I could hire out to the other side, the big money
side, and get several dollars every week just to
quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the
kind that knock you down still farther and the ones
that poke fun at you even more and the ones that
make you think that you've not got any sense at all.
But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to
death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The
radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and
your songbooks are already loaded down and running
over with such no good songs as that anyhow.
- Woody Guthrie
-------------------------------------------------
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of
Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and
anybody caught singin it without our permission,
will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't
give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing
to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted
to do." - Woody Guthrie; about his song: "This Land
is Your Land"
Zootwoman wrote:
> STEVEN STACK, Wayne State University JIM GUNDLACH, Auburn University
>
> Abstract
> This article assesses the link between country music and metropolitan
> suicide rates. Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood
> through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population,
> such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The
> results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show
> that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the
> white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness,
> poverty, and gun availability. The existence of a country music
> subculture is thought to reinforce the link between country music and
> suicide. Our model explains 51% of the variance in urban white suicide
> rates.
>
> Sociological work on the relationship between art and society has been
> largely restricted to speculative, sociohistorical theories that are
> often mutually opposed. Some theorists see art as creating social
> structure ( Adorno 1973), while Sorokin ( 1937 ) suggests that society
> and art are manifested in cyclical autonomous spheres; and still others
> contend that art is a reflection of social structure ( Albrecht 1954).
> Little empirical work has been done on the impact of music on social
> problems. While some research has linked music to criminal behavior (
> Singer, Levine & Jou 1990), the relationship between music and suicide
> remains largely unexplored. Music is not mentioned in reviews of the
> literature on suicide ( Lester 1983; Stack 1982, 1990b); instead, the
> impact of art on suicide has been largely restricted to analyses of
> television movies and soap operas (for a review, see Stack 1990b).
>
> In this article, we explore the link between a particular form of
> popular music (country music) and metropolitan suicide rates. We
> contend that the themes found in country music foster a suicidal mood
> among people already at risk of suicide and that it is thereby
> associated with a high suicide rate. The effect is buttressed by the
> country subculture and a link between this subculture and a racial
> status related to an increased suicide risk.
>
> © The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, September 1992
> 71(1):211-218
> * Data on suicide mortality and most other variables were provided by
> the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research,
> University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. We are grateful to Richard Peterson
> for his inspirations and helpful discussions, to the anonymous
> reviewers for their probing reviews, and to Mitch Henry for his help in
> gathering the data on country music. Direct correspondence to Steven
> Stack, Department of Sociology, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
> 48202.
>
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1174127,00.html
> First, Coca-Cola's new brand of "pure" bottled water, Dasani, was
> revealed earlier this month to be tap water taken from the mains. Then
> it emerged that what the firm described as its "highly sophisticated
> purification process", based on Nasa spacecraft technology, was in fact
> reverse osmosis used in many modest domestic water purification units.
>
> Yesterday, just when executives in charge of a £7m marketing push for
> the product must have felt it could get no worse, it did precisely
> that.
>
> The entire UK supply of Dasani was pulled off the shelves because it
> has been contaminated with bromate, a cancer-causing chemical.
> So now the full scale of Coke's PR disaster is clear. It goes something
> like this: take Thames Water from the tap in your factory in Sidcup,
> Kent; put it through a purification process, call it "pure" and give it
> a mark-up from 0.03p to 95p per half litre; in the process, add a batch
> of calcium chloride, containing bromide, for "taste profile"; then pump
> ozone through it, oxidising the bromide - which is not a problem - into
> bromate - which is. Finally, dispatch to the shops bottles of water
> containing up to twice the legal limit for bromate (10 micrograms per
> litre).
>
> The Drinking Water Inspectorate confirmed yesterday it had checked the
> Thames water supplied to the factory and found it free of bromate.
> Because it is unsafe at high levels, standards for bromate in tap water
> are strictly monitored.
>
> Bromide is a naturally occurring trace chemical which has a sedative
> effect. It is said to have been added by the British army to soldiers'
> tea during the second world war to dampen down their lust. But when it
> is oxidised into bromate it becomes "a pretty nasty carcinogen",
> according to David Drury, one of the principal inspectors for the DWI.
>
> "I've checked Thames water's supply this morning and it is free of
> bromate," he said.
>
> The legal limits are set to have a wide margin of safety, and the Food
> Standards Agency advice yesterday was that while Dasani contained
> illegal levels of bromate, it did not present an immediate risk to the
> public.
>
> "Any increased cancer risk is likely to be small. However the levels
> are higher than legally permitted in the UK and present an unnecessary
> risk. Some consumers may chose not to drink any Dasani they purchased
> prior to its withdrawal given the levels of bromate in it," the FSA
> said.
>
> Coca-Cola said it was voluntarily withdrawing all Dasani "to ensure
> that only products of the highest quality are provided to our
> consumers".
>
> If you want a refund you should call freephone 0800 227711.
>
> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,022,227.WKU.&OS=PN/4,022,227&RS=PN/4,022,227
>
> United States Patent 4,022,227
> Smith , et al. May 10, 1977
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Method of concealing partial baldness
>
>
> Abstract
> A method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair
> on a person's head. The hair styling requires dividing a person's hair
> into three sections and carefully folding one section over another.
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Inventors: Smith; Frank J. (233 Cosmos Drive, Orlando, FL 32807);
> Smith; Donald J. (517 Brockway Ave., Orlando, FL 32807)
>