What are the odds?

When I lived in Ohio I used to watch cop shows on TV. These shows invariably included a high-speed cross town car chase. They were great fun to watch, but because we didn't hear about such things on the news I kind of figured they didn't happen very often. Okay, maybe there was one a few years ago, and all the TV shows have used that one event as an excuse to include a chase in their show. Then I moved to Phoenix where the cops had a high-speed cross town car chase every week, if not every day.

Joselyn Alejandra Niño holding an M4 assault rifle. She was known as "La Flaca", or "Skinny Girl", and was an assassin working for the Ciclones, a Mexican drug cartel. She was killed in 2015 by a rival gang.

     Many action movies feature a cold blooded assassin. Once again I used to think that all these stories were based on one event. Then I started paying attention to the news, and while there may not be very many assassins killing people with precision using high-powered, take apart rifles, killing for business or political reasons is going on every day.

     Defibrillators have become somewhat common. They are being deployed like fire extinguishers. I wondered about the value of doing this. I mean, these things are kind of expensive, and is anyone's life ever saved by these things? I had never heard of it happening until my cousin told me about it happening at a group campout a couple of weeks ago. They were sitting around the fire after dinner and one guy just keeled over. Another fellow who worked for the U.S. Forest Service got the defibrillator out of his Forest Service truck, applied it, and save Mr. Keeled-over's life.
    So given my previous experience with extreme events, I am now willing to concede that deploying defibrillators like fire extinguishers might be a good idea.