News that makes us laugh, cry, or both

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 5:12 am

What I was actually talking about was the M_L's Laugh and or cry comment. It just seemed callous. But I didn't want to directly point it out.

I actually didn't click on that link until you talked about it, Koumei.

A few days ago, when I had a 7-8 year old kid in my house and she was flicking through the channels on the tv and saw the news for a minute and changed the tv after watching it for a minute she made a comment. THey were talking about the trains colliding in Washington D.C and killing two people. She said, "why do they keep saying this bullshit." I asked what she meant. and she said it's only two people. Her brother piped up that they should talk about the economical value of the damage to the train. 14, his age. Smart kids, both of them, obviously. But a little emotionally devoid in my opinion. I tried to get them to understand how it would feel to be in their shoes.

tried it in smaller scales. pinching her arms, then his, then said what if i pinched her mother, then mine, then my mom, then a stranger, how would she feel? pat answers - oh, i'd feel bad. what if a stranger did the same. - same.

if it was done out of sight - umm same except for the last. and then she got bored and ran away to play with some toys...

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 5:37 am

Actually, I totally agree. There's nothing special about a train accident that makes it inherently newsworthy. You know how many times every day that 2 people die in a car crash and it doesn't make the national news?

FIFTY.

Reporting on train crashes that kill two lousy people feeds into peoples' unrealistic ideas about the risks that surround them. It actually kills real people to talk about two people dead in a train wreck. People who would take trains (that are very safe) will take cars (that are very dangerous) ironically because they feel safer because the assholes on the news stuffed a story about some bullshit train crash in the middle of a daily news cycle.

-Username17

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 5:51 am

News worthiness probably not. But that was not the point I was trying to drive home, Frank. It was the malaise and the numbness felt by 'em that was my main point.

Maybe I was the same way. I can't remember anymore no more. But I still believe death is still not something not to be taken lightly. Of course, yes, after a while, there some professions and some doctrines that may not take them lightly while still grow numb to the pain? I can hope? Or am I being naive here? This is a question for the resident Doctor-in-Training.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 7:39 am

A_Cynic wrote:News worthiness probably not. But that was not the point I was trying to drive home, Frank. It was the malaise and the numbness felt by 'em that was my main point.

Meh, theres a lot of corpses that I'll never know or care about.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 8:14 am

A_Cynic wrote:It was the malaise and the numbness felt by 'em that was my main point.

So... they weren't senselessly panicking and grieving enough?

Or are you training them for a career in politics such that whenever an inconsequential tragedy falls across their sight they are compelled to make meaningless motherhood statements and pretend to care deeply?

violence in the media · Fri Jun 26, 2009 1:33 pm

Where's that irreverant graph about value of individuals related to size of population?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 10:56 pm

The train wreck is interesting, as the trains were supposed to be on automatic, and the stopped one wasn't supposed to be stopped.

But yes, they don't even report the number of times someone walks in front of a train here, yet parents get all angry about it - there's a spot where a high school (actually, there are several along the heavy train route) has a crossing, and two kids were killed there recently.

However, the parents blame the trains but somehow forget to remember that in nearly all of these cases it's suicide. Very infrequently are people killed or injured on accident on our train line.

-Crissa

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 26, 2009 11:11 pm

They should do it like in Japan: if you jump in front of a train, your family is charged for the cleanup. That convinced Japanese people to go back to jumping off of cliffs and letting the morning commute get to work on time.

-Username17

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Jun 27, 2009 1:23 am

FrankTrollman wrote:That convinced Japanese people to go back to jumping off of cliffs and letting the morning commute get to work on time.

Man, whatever happened to jumping off a horse with a sword in your mouth? Those guys used to have such style when it came to suicide.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sat Jun 27, 2009 3:51 am

I don't believe that people or kids should feel completely sentimental or completely grievous at everyone's death even if they haven't heard of them dying. But I live by a single credo. I don't try to enforce it on everybody. I try to tell it to everyone I meet and if people think it well and good, then let them follow it. "Do Good for goodness sake." It is not something groundbreaking or a new philosophy. But from it branches many different ideas. So I was trying to show one of them to the kids. After all, kids are best IMPRINTED at a young age -- hahahahaha - no kidding. Obviously, she wasn't taking to it. Even my wife doesn't take to it. But, that was what i tried. And that was the experience I was trying to impress upon this topic. Not the philosophy just the experience of that time.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:
Man, whatever happened to jumping off a horse with a sword in your mouth? Those guys used to have such style when it came to suicide.

Angel: This I am not familiar with.

Crissa: Yeah, taking it out on the trains when your kids might have committed suicide. Maybe because of problems at home or other reasons, nah. Fvck it. Train's fault.

----

violence in the media · Sat Jun 27, 2009 3:54 am

Don't they have to regularly clean corpses out of the cherry trees in some park over there?

Found it.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Jun 27, 2009 4:16 am

A_Cynic wrote:Angel: This I am not familiar with.

Back in the day, before honor-bound suicide became the formal stylized ritual that everything the Japanese touch eventually becomes, the warrior caste would kill themselves in whatever way they thought best. And there were points for style. The incident of the man who put his sword in his mouth blade-first and jumped off his galloping horse is noted as being particularly compelling. Other notables include the man who had his men drown him in a tub of rice-wine; and my personal favorite, the man who lit himself on fire and threw himself into a load of fireworks.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat Jun 27, 2009 4:46 am

A_Cynic wrote:Not the philosophy just the experience of that time.

So you were trying to impress an emotional reaction that itself is irrelevant to a philosophy which itself is irrelevant to the event which in turn is irrelevant to newsworthiness.

I'm so glad you are apparently involved in raising those kids.

They won't at all end up confused as a result.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sat Jun 27, 2009 4:55 am

PhoneLobster wrote:
A_Cynic wrote:Not the philosophy just the experience of that time.
So you were trying to impress an emotional reaction that itself is irrelevant to a philosophy which itself is irrelevant to the event which in turn is irrelevant to newsworthiness.

I'm so glad you are apparently involved in raising those kids.

They won't at all end up confused as a result.

And that was the experience I was trying to impress upon this topic. Not the philosophy just the experience of that time.

I don't know why I'm explaing this to you. But oh, well. The name of the topic that I was trying to impress it upon was News that makes us laugh, cry, or both

Oh, look, it is under a hyper text mark up language link --- The Den -- Here - Well Not Us - Not This Page - Because, Oh My God, I am an idiot, As PL suggested, This isn't what exactly the same page we are on!

edit: sarcasm

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat Jun 27, 2009 5:10 am

... and then you linked to a part of the forum where you can't see it.

Well I suppose it makes me laugh. But it isn't news.

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Sat Jun 27, 2009 9:38 am

angelfromanotherpin wrote: Back in the day, before honor-bound suicide became the formal stylized ritual that everything the Japanese touch eventually becomes, the warrior caste would kill themselves in whatever way they thought best. And there were points for style. The incident of the man who put his sword in his mouth blade-first and jumped off his galloping horse is noted as being particularly compelling. Other notables include the man who had his men drown him in a tub of rice-wine; and my personal favorite, the man who lit himself on fire and threw himself into a load of fireworks.

Oh man, give me sources. It will greatly help my thesis that all that is evil is coming from Japan.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Jun 29, 2009 9:44 pm

via Washington Monthly, Obama is a Decepticon appeaser!

Also, Israel seems to have collapsed in the Decepticon onslaught.

-Crissa

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Jun 30, 2009 9:09 pm

22,000 people per year die early - young people, not old people - from treatable causes because of lack of health care insurance in the US.

-Crissa

Lich-Loved · Post by **Lich-Loved** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 6:54 pm

Crissa wrote:22,000 people per year die early - young people, not old people - from treatable causes because of lack of health care insurance in the US.

-Crissa

Yikes. Well with solcialized medicine we can count on much lower cancer survival rates so the younger lives we save can be balanced out by more deaths later on.

Can we call it a wash?

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 7:52 pm

"One of the report's authors, Nils Wilking, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, explained that nearly half the improvement in survival rates in the United States in the 1990s was due to “the introduction of new oncology drugs,” and he urged other countries to make new drugs available faster."

Seems that universal health care won't affect this part.

And then there's the fact that public insurance is how the US should be doing it, not public health care.

Lich-Loved · Post by **Lich-Loved** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 9:30 pm

mean_liar wrote:Seems that universal health care won't affect this part.

Unless said healthcare plan controls costs by not using the latest (and most expensive) drugs, which is the case in Europe.

mean_liar wrote:And then there's the fact that public insurance is how the US should be doing it, not public health care.

The distinction between these is lost on me.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 10:03 pm

So, healthy people dying == good; unhealthy people dying == bad.

Cancer accounts for 13% of deaths worldwide(seems high to me, honestly). The US does better in that one statistic. Grand. Less than a tenth of a percent of the worldwide population develops a tumor each year... And there are slight differences between localities. Lastly, Europe has a higher incidence of cancer than the United States, and this gap is widening. Cancer develops based upon environment, not health care. Perhaps not having the last three world wars played out in your cities and farmland have something to do with that, we may never know.

Check, Lich. Apparently you don't seem to understand that people die of not having the right drugs in the United States, too. Are you somehow immune to this, being both insured and rich?

-Crissa

Count Arioch the 28th · Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:58 pm

Being insured doesn't mean anything, I have insurance, and I am still paying down a $2,000 bill where they gave me some pain pills and told me to lie down.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 4:09 am

Lich Loved wrote:Can we call it a wash?

No. Don't be stupid.

The United States has a lower life expectancy than France, Sweden, or even the United Kingdom. You can pick whatever bullshit statistic where the US does better that you want, because the United States does demonstrably worse in the integral of all the statistics. Are there things to pick out of the US system as being super cool enough to port over to other countries? Of course.

But the system as a whole does not work as well as other systems in other first world countries. And it costs more. That's not "works worse for the price" that's it works worse and it costs more. We pay more money. And we get less life extension.

So sure, pick all the nits you want and dumpster dive for tiny bullshit statistics that you can skew to make it sound like the US isn't fucking up and totally on fire. Because unless you're being fed these stats from someone else who's being deliberately disingenuous it is obvious that you're being deceitful yourself. Really, really obvious.

-Username17

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 5:12 am

Lich-Loved wrote:
Crissa wrote:22,000 people per year die early - young people, not old people - from treatable causes because of lack of health care insurance in the US.

-Crissa
Yikes. Well with solcialized medicine we can count on much lower cancer survival rates so the younger lives we save can be balanced out by more deaths later on.

Can we call it a wash?

And privatised healthcare results in many more deaths from Hep C. Who cares.

Life expectancy is a bad measure though, DALYs (number of years lost from life expectancy due to disease) is a much better measure.