blah my edit got lost


what I found was this, according to the WHO via Wiki, the US has about 10 suicides per 100,000 people. this time the US population of 298B divided by 365 days per year points to about 83 suicides per day in the US (sounds like a lot)

Ok, so 1/3rd of the population is not capable of committing suicide (babies or other people not physically skilled enough to kill themselves) so make that 40 or 50 suicides a day (still sounds like a lot - what am I missing here ?)

If there are 40 suicides a day in the US, whats the chance that a few of them were hangings, and the person had recently watched the hanging on tv/internet ? What am I missing here ?

-John

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A lot more people die of other causes. Why is this 83 you calculated significant?

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As far as I can tell, in the origional post they cited 1 case in texas and a few others in other countries of "Several boys die copying Saddam hanging".

well, if 40 people die per day of suicide, then 20 of them (or so, need to find gender bias in suicides...) are male (could be a boy) and therefore, this article cited one male (in the US) who committed suicide after seeing saddam's hanging.

If they are indeed "copycat" hangings, how is a hanging in a bedroom, using a slipknot (what kind of rope or knot was used in the saddam video ?) like or unlike saddam's hanging in a **wherever he was hung** ? I'm not seeing the "copycat" connection (knots used, type of rope, location, were they wearing what saddam was wearing...or were they just suicidal and wanted to hang themselves ?) Okay one guy in Turkey talked about it beforehand, one...

If the only "copycattedness" connection that can be made is the time frame (ie- they all hung themselves after saddam got hung) then here is my theory:

If there are 20 male suicides a day, odds are pretty good that ONE of them, in the week after saddam's hanging is going to be a person that recently viewed the hanging. One suicide in 100 (5-day suicide work week =) is not enough to convince me that "excessive media violence or natural selection" are at work. I would maintain that simply becuase they hung themselves in the week after saddam, does not imply that they wished to copycat him- I may be wrong, and I'm still open to someone who finds holes in my logic. That 40 suicides a day number still seems kinda high.

suicides per 100k people : to the wiki

population of the US: to the google

-John

__________________
2009 Kia Sedona
2009 Honda Odyssey EX-L
12006 Jetta Pumpe Duse
(insert Mercedes here)

Husband, Father, sometimes friend =)