It List
* Swiss Doors, Swiss people have the good sense to prefer easy open handles rather than doorknobs. Usability +1!
* The Corbett lives in Zurich, although this is pretty much a case of Switzerland getting lucky.
Shit List
* People who say “Everyone in Switzerland has a gun and they have one of the lowest crime rates in the world” or similar arguments frequently brandied about.
- if you check out wikipedia’s list of countries by murder rate then check out wikipedia’s list of countries by gun ownership you will note that Switzerland has a higher rate of violent crime than Canada even though Switzerland has substantially more guns per resident. Additionally, the United States has twice the gun ownership rates as Switzerland and more than twice the crime rate. So, when reality is examined, it turns out that gun ownership does not correlate to crime. It appears that crime is the result of a complex slurry of culture, education, access to economic resources, laws and probably several other things.
- This fact should also be considered when people in the United States make arguments about crime being prevented with increased gun ownership. Like Glenn Beck for example. However, Glenn Beck’s popularity does not mean that anything he says should be taken seriously.
This is a pretty cool picture of Switzerland taken by Philippe Sainte-Laudy.
::via Flickr::
Im SO GLAD someone else knows about the “Switzerland fallacy”.
I would also like to point out that the reason everyone in Switzerland has a gun might have to do with the fact that all Swiss men serve time in the defense forces (or army/militia, whatever they call it) and those men all have assault rifles at home at all time (albeit the use and storage is restricted).
The country is basically a giant military base.