16 Kids Killed in Schools Every Year

That was the headline on Yahoo news. The article said the rate is lower than it's been in previous years and it shows that school massacres are rare. Still, the number shocked me. I wonder how many students get killed in other western countries.

But the truly shocking thing (not surprising - I was aware of this but it's still a shock to the senses) - the truly shocking thing was the last line of the article:

Most children are killed at home, at parties or on the streets.

In Honolulu, a man threw a 2 year old off an overpass and the boy was run over by cars on the highway below. The man was the boy's babysitter.

In Connecticut, a babysitter killed a 1 year old boy she was babysitting. It may have been an accident - she said they played a game where she was carrying him around the house in a sleeping bag and his head banged against a door frame.

Speaking of dead children, the 17 year old boy who was killed by a tiger at a San Francisco zoo and his two friends were drinking, smoking marijuana and taunting the animal right before the attack. Police believe that's one of the reasons the tiger escaped and went after them.

Speaking of dead almost children, Maria Lauterbach, a 20 year old Marine was 8 months pregnant when she was murdered. The suspect, another Marine, confessed to burning her body and burying her. He claims she committed suicide by slitting her throat but the autopsy showed she died from blunt force trauma to the head. He fled to Mexico, which probably will not extradict him unless the government promises not to seek the death penalty. Lauterbach had accused him of raping her but the Marine investigators doubted her story.

The day before her body was found, Maria's stepmother told the press she was a compulsive liar. Thanks, Mom.

A new study shows that human beings crave violence the same way we crave sex, food or drugs. One of the researchers said:

“This shows for the first time that aggression, on its own, is motivating, and that the well-known positive reinforcer dopamine plays a critical role."