9/11 tribute

[Premezilla]

In school on 9/11, my homeroom teacher showed our class the complete attack on the World Trade Center. He gave us a web address to check out, which I did. It compiled the list of the victims of 9/11. I hope everyone who reads it will give a moment of silence to those fallen during the terrorist act.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-...p-regional-wire

God Bless.

[--Pete]

Hi,

And, just to keep things in perspective, lets have a hundred moments for the victims of drunk drivers who have killed about 40,000 per year and for which the government spends next to nothing.

"We have met the enemy and they are us" --WK

--Pete

[Vandiablo]

Yes, around two months after 9/11, I had thought to post that drunk drivers had subsequently killed as many people as victims of 9/11, but it was just too depressing..

[Occhidiangela]

From 1960 to 1975, the Unites States lost some 55, 000 dead in Viet Nam, and a few hundred thousand maimed and crippled.

From 1960-1975, the United States averaged 50,000 dead each year on the highways, about two thirds of whom were from drinking and driving. (The numbers are actually down these days due to a variety of reasons.) So, who killed more Americans: Victor Charlie, or "innocent" Americans using a deadly weapon: an automobile in an idiot's hands.

Where were the protests? In the streets, they wre against The War.

It took a new generation to start the MADD protests, and it took them over a DECADE to get social and political change. (I used to wear a "Drunks Against Madd Mothers" T-shirt due to the hypocrisy of the founder, though the cause is on the balance a just and good one: most people can't drive impaired without being a _severe danger_ to their fellow citizens, and therefore should not do it. ) It is easy to mobilize the public against someone else, but to mobilize the American public against itself takes a generation and a very good case, such as the case against smoking and the case against drunk driving. The usual initial response is:

"Everyone should be allowed to go to hell in their own way, but don't you, the government, tell me how or when or where to go to hell, or even if I get to buy a ticket." That is consistent with baseline American cultural lore on the relationship between the citizen and his government.

A moment of silence? I could have used a bit more of that from the media last week. Too many words, not enough of them with any meaning.

Some of us raise our flag every day, and have for years. I hope you will forgive us the raised eyebrow at the "Johnny come lately" crowd, OK? ;)

[Brother Laz]

And how many civilians have died in Afghanistan and Iraq...?

[Chaerophon]

If you want to get into an argument with Occhi, you could at least do it in private - I don't believe that anyone meant any disrespect to those (well, at least the vast majority of those) who have died on either side of the conflict and I don't believe that such a vaguely defined 'barb' is worth the time. Certainly, many civilians have died in Iraq and Afghanistan and whether or not it has been justifiable is definitely open to debate; however, there are threads all over the place that discuss those issues. Why pollute another?

[Occhidiangela]

Why are you asking me and what's your point?

Non-combatants die in every war, even when they are not targeted. When they are targeted, it gets bloody gory bloody fast. Consider the death of some 500,000 in Rwanda at the hands of their various countrymen, most of them easily classifiable, depending on who you were, as non-combatants. That was not an accident.

Life sucks that way, and it sucks hard.

Ask the folks in London who dealt with The Blitz, quite a few of them are still alive. The Blitz sucked.

When non-combatants are deliberately targeted, such as in the V rocket attacks on that very same London, the political fallout is different, since the political aim was different.

Consider the non-combatants killed by the Viet Minh and Viet Cong in the late 1950's: by most accounts the number 2,000 is very conservative. Let's talk about the non combatants in Viet Nam post 1975 who died in the "reeducation camps." Non combatants, dead. As to the Killing Fields of Cambodia . . . who was or was not a combatant?

When non combatants are deliberately targeted, even by crude WW II methods, the death toll runs into the tens and hundreds of thousands: see Chunking, Tokyo, Dresden.

When all is said and done body count math is irrlevant except to fuel propaganda and political emotion, which it serves well at times, and abysmally at other times.

Rarely does trying to get anything useful out of body count math do anyone any good: it can mislead policy makers, it can give one a false sense of victory or defeat (N Viet Nam 1.3 million dead as a conservative figure from 1960-1975, versus 55,000 US and 220,000 or so S Viet Nam, but they "won." Of what point that bit of body math?) and it can be used as a smoke screen for a variety of political agenda.

So my question to you would have to be:

What does your question have to do with the initial post, and more to the point, what does it have to do with my post? My post focused on non-combatant deaths in the highways, or weren't you reading it?

[channel1]

You may want to mention the Five million a year who die because they were addicted to tobacco. (source: The Lancet, September 12, 2003)

Of course, it's always easy to blame the addicts.

-rcv-

[Occhidiangela]

"Life is tough, and it is really tough when you're stupid." -=Sgt Stryker=-

Stupid people have died from being stupid for a long time. Heinlein's little one-liner has always made sense to me, along the lines of: "There is no sin in the universe but stupidity, and one punishment, death."

My smoking has probably shortened my life span. I chose to smoke, so I chose to shorten my life. Works for me, it's fair, I could have chosen not to, I could have chosen to take my momma's advice and not smoke. Besides her warning, the warning has been on the pack since before I started puffing the butts. You hear me crying about it? Nope. You pay your money and you take your chances.

Personal accountability works for me.

As that crazy old granny might have been heard to say:

"Shoot smack? Snort Coke? Smoke Crack? Drink too much moonshine? Smoke too much? You gonna die, and you gonna die young. Yore momma dun tole you it wuz bad fer ya, I guess you aint got the sense you wuz born with!"

[--Pete]

Hi,

You may want to mention the Five million a year who die because they were addicted to tobacco.

First, that's a matter of choice. I remember hearing that tobacco was bad for me in the late 50"s. Anyone under the age of 45 who smokes has no one else to blame.

Second, I suspect that figure, like most figures on smoking, is inflated crap. I've seen the survey forms, I've seen the analysis. Anyone who stubs a toe, dies of terminal hangnail, and has ever *held* a cigarette is written up as a "smoking fatality". The only ones who lie more than the tobacco companies on that issue are the anti-smoking activists. There is no truth in any of them.

--Pete

[ShadowHM]

The only ones who lie more than the tobacco companies on that issue are the anti-smoking activists.  There is no truth in any of them.

Aww heck.....


there is always conflicting opinion as to what the 'main' triggers for any 'untimely' death were.

Asbestosis killed a lot of men in the '30's and '40's. But many of them were chain smokers too.

They chose to smoke. They "chose" to work in the mine/factory/shipyard. Is there any way to really tell what got them?

Keeping a sharp eye for whose axe is being ground is only one clue as to whether any figure being quoted is worth believing.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Keeping a sharp eye for whose axe is being ground is only one clue as to whether any figure being quoted is worth believing.

When corporations lie (as they do in nearly every ad they support) I can write it off to "business". But when "scientists" (whose fundamental god is truth) lie, what can I then write it off as?

It may be foolish, it probably is foolish, but I tend to hold some people to higher standards. Which is why crooked cops, corrupt politicians and fraudulent scientists almost make a deist out of me -- only if god exists can there be a hell hot enough and a punishment long enough.

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

Better than a Dentist, one who worships pasta cooked "al dente." While possibly delicious, and worthy of praising a cook, "pasta al dente" with a delectable "salsa pomodori con aglio e vongole" aint worth starting a religion over.

*mouth waters*

Then again, maybe it is!

As one fellow once remarked:

"The fastest way to becoming a millionaire is to start a religion." I guess he turned out to be all at sea, though methinks he did make his million. :)

[eppie]

While possibly delicious, and worthy of praising a cook, "pasta al dente" with a delectable "salsa pomodori con aglio e vongole" aint worth starting a religion over.

*mouth waters*

Then again, maybe it is! 

For sure for a bel piato di penne rigate con peperoni e aceto balsamico, e anche un bel bichiere di dolceto d'alba, I would be in..... at least if in this religion no hatred would be preached towards pizza-lovers. :D

To my (probably poor) knowledge nobody has evere been killed by a plate of pasta (and I have been walking around in the Barilla factory) , so it must be a great way to keep people from doing all these terrible things to eachother.

"The "penne' are mightier then the gun"

[Occhidiangela]

Oh man, eppie, that sounds delectable! :D

I'd guess that being pro al dente need not require one to be anti-pizza nor anti-pannini, although any scalopini al limone might be considered an unholy abomination if it was chewy. (That's not supposed to be al dente: it would be heresy for it to be so as the secondi piate.) I was going to try some joke about the "second coming" of the waiter with the second plate, but it just did not click.

Piu vino Bianco, maestro!

[--Pete]

Hi,

While possibly delicious, and worthy of praising a cook, "pasta al dente" with a delectable "salsa pomodori con aglio e vongole" aint worth starting a religion over.

You must have missed the "tomatoes" debates. Does one improve or ruin a fine semolina product by slathering it with a mixture containing members of the nightshade family? Should pasta dishes be permitted this recent (c. 1640) interloper or should they be restricted to more traditional garnishes?

Many words, heated beyond al dente have been spent on this debate, with the majority of the proponents for pasta reform coming from the south of Italy (and San Francisco) while the more traditional school is represented more in the North. As for me, in this as in other religious matters, I am an agnostic. Or, perhaps, in this case more of a Jeffersonian apiarian: I flit from cuisine to cuisine, extracting the finest nectar from each. :)

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

I think the debate has been decided rather finally: put on your pasta what ever you like, but make it al dente. I confess to having been inundated with the pro-pomodoro argument due to locale, habit, and three crops a year grown locally in volcanic soil . . . oops, drooling again. :o However, a farfale Genovese still suits the palate, free of the uibiquitous nightshades. :)

As to the apiarian approach, I am all for it and that's why I can't be a wine snob: too many good ones to choose, to my way of thinking, to exclude any over a label, cork, week, month, year, locale or winter if it tickles the palate.