I just happen to have my EW right in front of me right now {yes, I'm reading it and watching TV and posting, why?} and there's an article about Diane Farr,who played Laura on Rescue Me. She says lugging the firefighter equipment around was sending her to the chiropractor and acupunctionist too often so when the Numb3rs gig came up she jumped.

And I remember hearing some vauge references to Sabrina Lloyd being some kind of problem child and that's why she was written out of Sliders and now Numb3rs. But I don't know what that is all about.

Can you tell I just caught up on all the shows I taped this week?

For me, both Numb3rs and Threshold is all about the casts. The stories are secondary.

how come, Erika?

Cause I'm crime lady today? I got more crime stats.

Also, WTR the phone. I wonder how it's weapon-of-choiceness is being changed by cordless phones (less heft) and cell phones (ditto).

I'd still say grab a knife. But that's just me.

I think phones have a better payoff than books -- fit the hand well for bludgeoning, more aerodynamic, and more pointy bits, and if a land line, good heft.

I wouldn't throw a phone because I might break it, and that would make me madder. Crockery -- that'd be practical.

the victims of that violence, statistically, are most often other men

Hmm. I'm in the middle of judging man-on-woman violence as worse than man-on-man, but it's more that violence among people who're more equally matched in weight and strength is less bad. And that's more often going to happen within the genders, but really, if you're picking fights with people your own size, you're a bit of an idiot.

There was a point at the start of that, really.

Comment from the middle of Spooks episode 1, series 4: Spies should keep their phones on vibrate, as a general rule.

Yeah. Loving the bloodthirsty details. Sad about DF's ouchies, although she was even better as a police detective on "The Job". She nailed that. It was sad that it didn't stay on.

Quester, that's all kinda spoilery wrt casting changes on both shows.

Kat -- do you think these are the sorts of violent encounters where the perp goes in search of something? Unless I had a knife right to hand, it wouldn't fit the generally explosive vision I had of these things -- reaching around for something convenient, instead of going looking. Also, throwing is more impetuous than stabbing, I think.

I think husband-on-wife violence is especially upsetting because it is so endemic and it was tacitly endorsed for so long. There was a bit I read today that was in a state's penal code (can't remember which one) about the Sanctity of Domestic Circle which basically says that men could use a reasonable degree of force necessary to control their wives.

Also creepy and sad is that more women seek treatment from injuries incurred from doemstic violence at ERs than mugging, rapes and accidents combined.

Also also, 1 in 5 homicides occur within that "family circle," meaning victim and perp are in the same family.

ita, I know what you mean. Looking for a knife seems to break the flow a good throwdown unless you're in the kitchen.

One of the things I'm struck by is how much of our national ethos is actually violence promoting (for example, the frontiersman image, the fact that rugged individualism is celebrated alongside the image of hyper masculinity from that image). That combined with ready access to guns and we're screwed.

In the US there are more gun dealers than gas stations.

Comment from the middle of Spooks episode 1, series 4:

Indeed. And their pagers, too, though I supposed paging during a funeral is less unspyworthy than ringing on a recon mission .

Also, because I just finished Spooks Season 3 They killed Danny! Those bastards. And they put him through the damn ringer several times before actually offing him. Heartless. But so good .

I'm depressing myself. I think I'll go back to thinking about historical violence, like the creepy Scots family that lived in a cave. They would rob travelers on the road then eat them to hide the evidence. And they were serious about the eating part. When they were discovered there were several bodies being cured.

They raised several children who began incestuous relationships and had children of their own, all living in that cave, stealing, murdering and cannibalizing.

Now that's a story to tell the kiddies to scare them at night. Too bad it's true.