eeping. That's one interesting characteristic. Well, two: it's super easy to do. And number two, you're not gonna do it. You're not gonna do it. Neither am I.

Here's that good advice: stop looking at your screens 30 minutes before you try to go to sleep. Really? You think I'm gonna not look at my phone 30 minutes before I hit the bed? What kind of Little House on the Prairie world do you live in that you can go more than 30 minutes without looking at a screen? A book? Get away from me with your paper books. Yeah, I guess listening to music's okay, but the way I do it, I usually have to look at a screen to select the music.

So there's your tip of the day. Turn off your screens. Now you won't do it.

Let me ask you this: are mass shootings a big problem or a small problem? Here's why I ask. The news business needs to put faces and names on stories, because you would not read a story about a concept. You would only read a story about, oh, this farmer lost their farm because of this, or this person was the victim of this. So the news needs to put names and faces on stories.

And what is the predictable effect of having to put names and faces on all your stories? Well, the predictable effect is that the more easily you can put a sympathetic name on it, the more attention it will get. What wouldn't excite our senses in the worst possible way more than murder of children? Nothing, right? That's it. That's the highest one.

So given that they will have names and faces, which is already happening, it's inevitable that we would look at things with names and faces as the important things. But are they?

Now let me be clear. If you or somebody you knew were a victim of some tragedy, this one or any other, that's the most important thing in your world for sure. But the world is full of tragedies. Do we not get to rank them so that we know which ones we should focus on? Because right now the news is ranking them by how easily you can put a face on it. That's it. The stories you see are based on how easily you can put a face on it.

Do you know how many times, given that I'm in this business, do you know how many times I've been asked to put a face on something or a name? It's just the most common thing that people in this business ask for. Okay, but I need a face and a name to make this story. So if there are a whole bunch of victims in the story, there's going to be lots of faces and names.

But if you were to measure the size of this problem — gun murders versus the size of our other problems — where would it be? Now remember, 20 kids, if you were to multiply it by the number of years each of them has left on average, that's robbing the most human spark, I guess. So that would be worse than 20 senior citizens in terms of number of living years that were lost. So it makes sense that anything with kids is a tragedy. Nothing affects us more emotionally.

But I'm trying to put it in context, and I'm not sure I can. Because as much as I value — I like to think I can rationalize things and try to take my emotion out of it — I don't know if I can. Beca