8 LISTENER MARCH 10 2018
A
nxiety remains in US schools
in the wake of the Florida
high school tragedy but is
tempered by the sense that
those 17 deaths may yet prove to
be a tipping point in America’s gun
debate. Here in Montgomery County,
Maryland, just over the Washington
DC border, another week has brought
another email from the superinten-
dent of schools.
This time he reported that a boy
had been arrested last week for
possession of a loaded handgun at
a county high school. The student
had made no threat;
nor had he indicated
that he wished to harm
anyone. Perhaps he
believed he needed the
gun for self-defence.
That would be in line
with President Donald
Trump’s suggestion that
some teachers could be
armed.
Only Trump and
perhaps the National
Rifle Association seem
to think the answer
to guns in schools is
to have more guns in
schools. The notion
of teachers having
a shoot-out with a
deranged student would
be almost enough toHow long can
Donald Trump
keep thumbing his
nose at Americans
over gun control?
Trigger unhappy
You may be
able to ask it
to turn on the
radio, but good
luck with “take
the laundry
upstairs”.
ANTHONY ELLISON
“Have you noticed that the battery life varies with these things?”
make me consider home schooling, except that
my daughter would rather take her chances with
a madman at school than spend her days at home
with her mother. To be honest, I’d rather she took
her chance at school than be home with me, too.
But the edginess lingers. When a student’s
backpack bumped and set off the fire alarm at her
school one day last week, there was an immediate
email from the principal to every family assuring
them that it had been a false alarm.
Being on edge is focusing minds. I have long
thought that in a democracy, it is usually the public
who lead the politicians, not the other way around.
That is certainly the case here and now. The
momentum for change is palpable.B
ecause I subscribe to the New York Times, I
was sent an email offering a complimentary
“Google Home” if I switched to annual billing.
A Google Home, the email helpfully told me, is “a
voice-activated speaker with Google Assistant built
in”. It would be the perfect companion to my Times
subscription, and to my day, I was told.
I beg to differ. In fact, I beg to differ so much that
I would pay double my subscription to guaranteenever having to have one of these
things enter my home. For a start,
I can see it being something that
requires you to repeat yourself 10
times and even then never does what
you ask – just like having another kid
in the house.
And, yes, you may be able to ask it
to turn on the radio, but good luck
with “would you please take the
laundry upstairs”. That is not in its
repertoire. Mind you, it seems not to
be in the repertoire of my daughter,
either, and she has arms and legs, so
has less excuse.
Aside from the fact that I do not
think it would be useful, this is the
point where I say no to the technol-
ogy and mechanisation that have
entered our domestic lives with not
so much an insidious creep as a full-
on invasion.
If I had my way, I would not have a
television or a microwave, either, but
to do without those would mean also
doing without my
husband. That is
not an exchange I
wish to make.
Although I am
not quite at the
stage of thinking
the microwave
is reading my
brain impulses,
my use of my PC
and phone means
Google already
knows more
about me than
my family does.
A voice-activated
home assistant
is a line I shall
not cross. Did
you hear that,
Google? lBACK TO BLACK
JOANNE
BLACK
IN WASHINGTON DC