There are a million kinds of old people, so I'm sure we would have a strong base of volunteers here, too. I hope I'm that kind of old person.
NMY fiancee told me this story. My immediate response was "in a society with like 100% ethnic homogeneity and no immigrants, there must be a lot of feeling of obligation across the generations that we may not have here."
Also, humans are hopelessly self-contradictory. If it were happening here, some of the sign ups would be Tea Partiers, some Libertarians, some ex-Wall Strieet types, and some perfectly nice people. Being easily sold on selfish rhetoric from politicians doesn't tell you much else about a person.
Also, humans are hopelessly self-contradictory.
We are not.
Ooops. I missed "self" in self-contradictory. I am that.
So how many Fukushimas would we have to have to solve Medicare?
Wouldn't old people be at lower risk as well? They have a lower life expectancy and thus less time to develop cancer.
7: I think that's exactly the point -- that it makes sense for them to take the exposure, because they'll take less lifetime damage from it.
I think Japanese old people really are more self sacrificing than American old people because the Japanese in general are more self-sacrificing than Americans.
because the Japanese in general are more self-sacrificing than Americans.
Are they? What does this mean?
They crashed airplanes into ships on purpose. I suppose that is more self-sacrificing than any similarly prevalent U.S. activity.
Unless you count eating the HoHos before the kids can become chunky.
Why limit this to nuclear cleanups? Shouldn't old people do all of society's most dangerous work?
Al Franken had that idea. He wanted to make space exploration cheaper by cutting most of the safety features and using senior citizens.
There's a bit of difference with radiation. If the risk is radiation exposure with that will give you a 30% chance of cancer 30 years from now, a sixty-five-year-old worker only actually has a (pulling numbers out of a hat) 5% chance of cancer, because they've only got a 15% chance of being alive at all in 30 years. They've genuinely got less risk of any perceptible ill-effect than a younger worker.
If the risk were immediate death by explosion, they'd have fewer expected years to lose than a younger worker, but the same chance of being affected at all.
Shouldn't old people do all of society's most dangerous work?
Did I not mention that we had the elderly on our roof?
Also, all your cells divide more slowly when you're old, so it's literally doing less damage, I think. Ie getting radiation exposure as a 3 year old will cause a much bigger ripple over the next year than getting radiation exposure as an 83 year old.
(The 3 year old's repair mechanisms are better, too, but y'know. Cells stop multiplying very fast, is my point.)
10: It is just a part of the general tendancy of the Japanese to be more community oriented and less individualistic than Americans. This gets discussed in the media whenever people in Japan agree to some intrusive regulation that Americans would never tolerate, like the anti-obesity campaign which involves the government collecting weight data on everyone in the country and issuing individualized recommendations.
Another example: There was an article in the NYT about the Tokyo recycling system, which requires residents to sort their garbage into 23 different categories. Neighbors get really intent on policing each other, and people will feel shame if they sort their garbage wrong.
16: Remember how Grandma likes to play on the roof?
Asbestos remediation seems like it could be done much more inexpensively on the same theory--cut the safety protocol meant to minimize exposure, and just use old people. Symptoms usually don't develop for decades.
If the risk were immediate death by explosion, they'd have fewer expected years to lose than a younger worker
Right. I want to repeat comment 13.
Neighbors get really intent on policing each other
If bitching out how other people park counts, same with my neighbors.
It is just a part of the general tendancy of the Japanese to be more community oriented and less individualistic than Americans.
I don't totally buy that this amounts to self-sacrifice. People do what is situationally demanded of them. If this means working a half-dozen jobs to support your kids as a single parent, they do it. They may be totally individualistic, but hugely self-sacrificing. Self-sacrifice generally doesn't feel like much of a choice.
A group of more than 200 Japanese pensioners are volunteering to tackle the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power station.
If I thought I could do any good, I would do that. I think.
It is very different from cleaning turtles at the Gulf, more romantic or something.
But I have heard that Fukushima is still too hot to get anything really useful done. Like ten minutes maximum hot. Hell, I haven't posted because F is very bad and still getting worse.
Another example: There was an article in the NYT about the Tokyo recycling system, which requires residents to sort their garbage into 23 different categories. Neighbors get really intent on policing each other, and people will feel shame if they sort their garbage wrong.
There are HOAs here which police all kinds of huge impositions on each other.
20: Generally, you want to keep the asbestos fibers from getting out into the air which requires lots of barriers and wetting. I don't think you'd save much by not giving the workers masks and suits.
And what's more selfish than that?
Getting oral then going to sleep?
OR: consuming 25% of the world's resources with only 5% of the world's population?
10:Ballad of Narayama is still part of the culture.
26: I don't actually know that this would make much of a difference, but might it be easier to get companies to do the work, even taking the same precautions, if they knew their actuarial chances of getting sued by cancerous workers twenty years down the road were lower?
29: They could source all their oldies from Asbestos, Quebec.
29: Maybe, but I don't think you could convince anybody of that. My brother was in that line of law for a while and it did not mesh when sanity as I see it.
you want to keep the asbestos fibers from getting out into the air
So that people don't breathe them. But if the people are old, who cares? Just let the particles fly about, and then use a good vacuum to clean up everything afterwards, before anyone with a longer life-expectancy comes around. Much cheaper.
I was a couple of doors down from that line of law for a few years and was horrified by the prospect of getting sucked into it. Luckily, tobacco work was a defense ("Sorry, man, I can only work on one carcinogen at a time.")
32: Are you trying to get a job running the US Steel coke plant?
Neighbors get really intent on policing each other, and people will feel shame if they sort their garbage wrong.
This sounds like a not-so-awesome flipside to the claim that the Japanese are "more community oriented and less individualistic than Americans."
IANA cancer biologist, but I doubt the risk is reduced as much people seem to be assuming from lifespan considerations alone. Last time I read anything about oncogenesis, it was thought that most cancers follow "two-hit" (or, more generally, multiple-hit) pathways: for cell growth to get out of control, you need to acquire mutations to both copies of, say, a tumor suppressor (or in several different genes involved in cell growth regulation). We all acquire such mutations slowly in normal life; the longer you've lived, the more (on average) you'll have racked up, and the greater the chance that the next mutation you acquire will be the second hit. That means there's a greater likelihood that radiation exposure in the elderly will be the event that directly precipitates emergence of a tumor.
How big a deal this is likely to be in practice depends on how fast we actually accumulate mutations in daily life. I don't have a good feel for that. But when people say that cancers often take decades after an exposure event to emerge, what's typically going on in those decades is (exposure and first mutation)-nothing-nothing-nothing-nothing-(sporadic second mutation)-cancer. That sporadic mutation occurs often enough on a timescale of decades that we worry about avoiding the first exposure; so I would guess that a 60-year-old is substantially more likely than a 30-year-old to be carrying a mutation in one copy of a cancer-related gene. If that's true, then the short-term cancer rate for a corps of volunteers like this is likely to be substantially higher than it would be for 30-year-old workers. So what's gained?
Probably multiply pwned, but what the hell.
But also, per 17, tumors themselves are slower-growing and less deadly when you're in your 80s.
how many Fukushimas would we have to have to solve Medicare?
Montaigne changed his mind about dying with equanimity when he was quite old.
A collective decision to decline some expensive medical care by the elderly would do it. Personally, I hope that I will feel this way (no hospital, thanks) when I am old, and do not want either of my parents thinking this way now.
Also, while the number of QALYs destroyed by elderly volunteers is lower, the number of cancers is more complicated. It is an unusual cancer that is caused by a single mutation; looking at the age distribution of onset often allows estimation of how many mutations are requred, with 3-5 being typical for many neoplasias. This is why it helps to stop smoking even in old age.
On the veldt, tumors only had to move as fast the bowels in which they resided.
Hi GB.
17 does not imply 38, at all. Rapidly reproducing tissues are much more susceptible to developing neoplasias when subjected to mutagens (adolescents at Hiroshima are the first example people noticed, I think). This says nothing about what happens to the mutated cells.
I hope that I will feel this way (no hospital, thanks) when I am old, and do not want either of my parents thinking this way now.
I had a conversation on this theme recently with a few friends. All of us have parents who've said something along the lines of, if I'm ever being kept alive only by a machine, pull the plug. But when we thought about what it would be like in that moment, in the hospital, or whatever, we all doubted we could actually go through with their stated wishes.
17 doesn't imply 38, but both are facts that I believe are true. For 38, I'm basing this on:
- A great-aunt who died on the operating table, getting a mastectomy. An oncologist family member said to me along the lines of "The sad part is that she shouldn't have been getting the mastectomy at her age at all. Breast tumors are rarely fatal if you're in your 80s because they're so slow growing".
- A family member currently with multiple myeloma, whose tumors grow faster when he has a fever. (Not perfectly related but still in my mind.)
For the first quote, "slow growing" is ambiguous how I wrote it. The oncologist said something like "slow growing compared to breast cancer tumors that you get when you're younger."
I don't think 15.2 is quite the right objection. What I'm proposing is that the options are (1) send in 30-year-olds, who will have some increased risk of cancer decades later; and (2) send in 60-year-olds, who will have some increased risk of cancer in the next few years. Cancer risk for both groups peaks late in life---perhaps a little earlier for (1) than for (2), but not by much.
I'm finding 17 mechanistically incoherent. Cell division doesn't gradually slow; it just stops, in most cells in your body, once you stop growing. (There are a handful of cell types that keep it up, but in terms of numbers of cells, they're a small minority.) In any case, cancers form when cells escape the normal division regime, whatever the current division regime is.
Cell division doesn't gradually slow; it just stops, in most cells in your body, once you stop growing.
Oh. I thought it switched to replacement levels of cell division, instead of growth levels of cell division. I was picturing how it takes a cut much longer to heal when you're 70 than when you're 7.
44 is surprising to me.
I don't think 15.2 is quite the right objection. What I'm proposing is that the options are (1) send in 30-year-olds, who will have some increased risk of cancer decades later; and (2) send in 60-year-olds, who will have some increased risk of cancer in the next few years.
This seems more likely to be true at the risk levels of something like smoking than at the risk levels of something like cleaning up nuclear disasters. Somehow I think if we sent in the 30 year olds, we'd start to see problems sooner than a few decades from now. In which case, 15.2 is entirely applicable, although it's an endorsement, not an objection.
if I'm ever being kept alive only by a machine, pull the plug
As terrible as that would be, I think the banal horribleness of sickness and dying often comes more to things like, Do I do another round of chemo? Do I get the colostomy bag? When you know you're going to die from this thing, there can be something even worse about the indignities along the way, even if they make some sort of sense at the time.
I thought it switched to replacement levels of cell division, instead of growth levels of cell division. I was picturing how it takes a cut much longer to heal when you're 70 than when you're 7.
Sure, fine. But that switch happens well before the age at which anyone is considered for reactor decontamination detail.
(I should say again that I've never actually done research on eukaryotes, let alone on cancer, so I have a biologist's understanding of this stuff but not a specialist's. So take this all with a grain of salt of smallish but nonzero mass.)
Sorry about your great-aunt.
I'm not an MD, and am at the limits of my depths here, but: cancer isn't one single disease. There are many types of neoplasias present in the body that simmer along quietly until a few eventually become malignant. Most prostate cancer is like this, for example. Others grow very aggresively, papilloma-induced cervical cancer for one.
Thinking about "typical cancer" doesn't go very far, I believe.
49: Maybe the bomb squad is a better case.
I know this criticism could be applied to 90 percent of Internet arguments, but really: bad cases make bad law.
I mean, this is an organization of "more than 200" people. Japan is a country of about 127 million. This organization is offering to help with one specific, very rare problem. In general of course you wouldn't want old people doing dangerous work, partly due to humanitarian reasons and partly due to the greater likelihood of physical infirmity making the work more dangerous to themselves and others (while of course you could decide on an individual basis who to hire based on whether they are capable of doing the job well, and include the hypothetical really spry 70-year-old while excluding the fatass couch potato 30-year-old, that doesn't apply to a group of hundreds of volunteers). In general it's sad at the very least if old people are forced by circumstances to work at all; we like to think people watch out for their family, our social safety net isn't that bad, etc. In general I'm sure there are differences in culture between America and Japan that cause interesting differences in how people act.
But this is a case of a couple hundred volunteers offering to work on a nearly unprecedented disaster in which, you know, their risk probably actually is at least somewhat reduced. I'm pretty sure you could find 200 Americans theoretically willing to volunteer for anything. (And I'm sure apo or Stanley or someone can find great links to illustrate that.)
My plan to become elderly while aquiring no useful skills is looking better and better.
This seems more likely to be true at the risk levels of something like smoking than at the risk levels of something like cleaning up nuclear disasters.
That's not obvious. Per the article linked in the OP, Japan's current dose limit for radiation workers is 250 millisievert per year. Assuming they're actually obeying that limit, that represents some additional risk but not actually all that much. There's a 1996 National Cancer Institute report that puts additional cancer incidence at ~25 per 10000 people exposed to a 1-sievert dose. The dose-response relationship isn't well understood, but I doubt the risk is any higher with a fourfold lower dose. Even if the dose-response curve is flat in this region, 25 per 10000 is really not so bad: beyond awful for the 0.25% and their families, but roughly on par in the aggregate with texting while driving.
Well slap my ass and call me Susan!
Seriously, please?
Japan's current dose limit for radiation workers is 250 millisievert per year. Assuming they're actually obeying that limit, that represents some additional risk but not actually all that much.
We're not going to gain much if we follow all the current safety regulations, no. That should be obvious. But the safety regulations were undoubtedly promulgated with the thought that non-old people would be involved. If we've got an all-old-people clean-up crew, shouldn't they arguably be loosened?
Is there any particular need to loosen them, or do you just want old people dead? I can see an argument that at any level of radiation exposure, all else being equal better an old person than a young person should be exposed, but in the absence of necessity why would we irradiate the oldsters any more than we had to?
I wasn't thinking of nuclear cleanup specifically so much as dangerous jobs in general. Mostly because I don't know anything about nuclear cleanup. But on the nuclear cleanup point, it seems perfectly plausible to me that it might be faster, cheaper and easier with looser worker safety regulations.
I'm gonna make like a tree and leave.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Get it?
Ageist? I'm only talking about hiring old people who want to do this sort of work, for the good of society. I haven't even brought up the idea of mass conscription.
It doesn't have to be limited to dangerous things in the more darring ways. At restuarants where nearly all guests are elderly, why waste money by making every employee wash their hands just because they took a leak?
You know, for all that I'm saying above that the risks are less horrible than we tend to imagine, I am not keen to see looser safety regulations for radioactivity workers, especially not on grounds that things would be faster, cheaper, and easier in a less-regulated nuclear industry. Call me crazy.
I mean, we're already paying for their healthcare, so they hardly have a right to complain if we happen to cause a few medical issues.
At restuarants where nearly all guests are elderly, why waste money by making every employee wash their hands just because they took a leak?
Framing this in terms of wasted money makes it sound coarse. But why waste all that water? That's a good question.
You know, people quote "Soylent Green is people!" as if that were necessarily a bad thing. Properly and humanely organized, what could be lower-carbon than reducing population and livestock-headcount in one practice?
67 is a joke, in case that's not clear. I'm not sure I see the societal benefit to exposing old people to additional germs. That's sort of the inverse of the nuclear reactor issue--aren't the elderly generally more susceptible to disease, and often harder-hit by it?
I'm not sure I see the societal benefit to exposing old people to additional germs.
Broken window effect -- providing them with medical treatment keeps the economy healthy.
Maybe the bomb squad is a better case.
A bunch of dudes with shaky hands would up the excitement level for sure.
Broken window effect
I believe the common name is "broken window fallacy", and for good reason.
71: It's nearly always not a bomb. You just need somebody to say so after a quick peek because waiting for the stupid camera robot is so slow.
And think of all the great YouTube videos of old people attacking stuffed ponies with axes. I figure we'd give them axes to defuse bombs with -- all that high-tech training current bomb-squad members get would be wasted.
Guess what's in my pocket! C'mon, guess!
You just need somebody to say so after a quick peek because waiting for the stupid camera robot is so slow.
I'm probably going to end up a pink stain one of these days. I've just opened stuff up because I don't want to wait around for hours blocking traffic and shit.(not on real bomb threats, just scenarios like when someone calls in a "suspicious package" that's obviously a hobo's backpack)
76: You know who I bet could tell you 100% for-sure whether it's a hobo's pack? I mean, based on specialized knowledge gained after years of experience?
Also, the broken window fallacy is a different think from the broken window effect.
78: it's not? Then what the hell is it?
80: I was confused. There is the broken window fallacy (i.e. if nobody breaks windows the economy would collapse) and the newer broken window theory (i.e. if you break a window somebody breaks more). While they are different, nothing in this thread suggested the second meaning was relevant here.
Is it racist to refer to someone as a boor?
Alan 'Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner' Sillitoe wrote a satirical novel (Travels in Nihilon) about a nihilist state in which wars were fought by pensioners who drove drunkenly off to the front in convertible sports cars.
re: 82
Looking at the etymology it's more classist. Like Scots referring to someone as a teuchter, or the English to someone as a bumpkin.
That's what I thought (except rather less coherently) when I looked it up. An annoying, more-right-on-than-thou woman I know just asked, "So is there a non racist way to say 'boorish'?" And after I'd finished rolling my eyes, I laughed at the "so".
the broken window fallacy (i.e. if nobody breaks windows the economy would collapse)
More that going around and breaking windows would increase GDP. Which (according to the theory) is a fallacy, since while it would have measurable economic impact, resources poured into repairing the windows would have to be diverted from somewhere else, so there shouldn't be any macroeconomic boost to GDP. (Or, more correctly I guess, it's not technically a fallacy, but it's only true in times of less than full employment) (which is why rioters tend to break windows when the economy gets bad).
The turn of the previous century in the US was a high point for boorish architecture.
87: I was being a bit flippant.
Also, I ran up a hill and passed a cyclist going the same way. This made me feel better for reasons that probably don't reflect well upon me.
I was being a bit flippant.
And I was procrastinating.
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holy crap this weather is insane!
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91:Yes, indeedy. Tornadoes!
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Anybody able to show me a way to figure out calculus that I never learned. I'm interested in understanding the math behind Ramsey pricing.
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Btw, given the fears expressed here, it's pretty clear that Fukushima has been kinda a bust as a major disaster, no?
This comment written while driving.
92.2: There's just the smallest bit of calc in that and it isn't needed to calculate the price. You just need it to find the formula to calculate the price by finding the area between the supply and demand curves.
93.1: that surely isn't clear yet. Is Chernobyl a bust as a major disaster?
93.2: Don't do that.
It's L.A., where "driving" involves a lot of time not actually moving.
93: I agree. No giant lizards. WHERE ARE MY GODDAMNED GIANT LIZARDS? You let me down, Japan.
Germans are taking the giant lizards seriously. Do they know something we don't?
L.A. is contributing to climate change, also, no matter how much value it thinks it provides to compensate.
They know that coal fired power is worse for lizards, unlike nukes which just give them a growth boost. That's why they're shutting down their nukes while keeping their coal plants open.
You're contributing to climate change, parsimon.
97: Just today, my wife saw an old guy get hit (lightly) by a driver looking down at her phone instead of the crosswalk. He stayed in front of her, beating on the hood, and berated her until somebody came out of another car and calmed him down. I don't want to become that guy, flailing away ineffectually with a pain in my hand to match that in my leg. I keep an old-school can opener on my key chain.
103: see, if you biked to work, you'd have a kryptonite lock, and could really do some damage.
104: There's probably no legal reason I couldn't just get a belt knife.
107: what would a belt knife do against a car?
100 -- actually, Los Angeles has the second-smallest per capita carbon footprint of any City in the US, and is significantly better on that front than Baltimore. And we're implementing our own version of cap and trade whe the rest of the country does nothing. Other than that, you're completely correct, Parsimon.
109: That's because LA doesn't actually make or do anything. All your carbon is extruded in places.
108: Ruin the hood, I guess. Maybe I'll just go straight to car jacking.
109: well, of any of the 100 largest cities, and of course that stat ignores commuter cities which feed to los angeles (along with other cities), but I think you mostly have a point, so you ride that gassy, gassy high horse.
109: Okay, sorry. I'd hoped it was obvious from tone that I was just yanking your chain, as they say. What I would call teasing. About the driving.
Or... something. I actually can't make heads or tails of the cite halford gave. You crazy, halford, and I'd like a handy chart to look at.
109 Fair point, but like lots of stuff comparing US metro areas that includes LA, it's flawed since the definition used excludes most of exurban LA, which is not generally the case for the other cities. E.g. in NYC it includes everything that can even remotely be considered part of the metro area in NY state, Jersey, and PA, while the stuff it excludes are the CT parts which ranges from very transit centric inner suburbs to exurbs.
108,111 Just get an ice ax, or even better two climbing ice axes, strap some steel crampons on and treat the offending car like a wall of ice.
113: Also, LA contains far less silicone breast implants than people think it does, and is better than Baltimore on that front.
115 -- no, you are completely wrong. The LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana area contains plenty of exurbs. Admittedly it doesn't contain the inland empire, but if your point is that somehow this is a false comparison because it only includes an urban core, that's just wrong. Most of the difference in carbon emissions has nothing to do with cars, btw -- it comes from how power is generated and used for things like heating in the winter.
To Moby, the LA area also has more manufacturing jobs than anywhere else in the US, but of course no one actually makes or does anything.
117: Is that on the census or something? If you're just going by sight, it could easily be that the best plastic surgeons don't want to live in Baltimore.
120: The weather problem explains it. But, there's a working coke oven down the street from me and that's bound to boost the total somewhat.
it comes from how power is [...] used for things like heating in the winter.
Definitely cheating.
I was thinking about this while listening about the Mars Rover program. There would be a ton of oldsters volunteering to visit Mars (and never come back). I nominate Al Franken.
120: Most of the difference in carbon emissions has nothing to do with cars, btw -- it comes from how power is generated and used for things like heating in the winter.
It is true that we could all move to climates in which we don't have to use much heat in winter or much A/C in summer. I don't know how much A/C you all in LA use, or how the power for that is generated (is it generated outside LA itself?). I'm completely unqualified to assess methods of heating and air conditioning, actually, as used in various parts of the country.
It's differences in power genertion that are really critical. Seattle is per-capita green, and quite cold, but it gets essentially all of its power from hydroelectricity. LA gets relatively little power from coal, and what it does get is heavily scrubbed due to decades of extraordinarily tight air pollution regulations. NYC also does very well on a per capita basis, probably benefiting from both density and power generation benefits.
127 con't: I should have added that I'm not up to speed on LA's water situation, and how many/much resources, depending on what sources of energy output, supply its needs.
The point is! The east coast is crowded and doesn't have a lot of room to expand its energy resources*, and has heating needs, but some significant portions of California have water issues! I did not intend to start this kind of fight, certainly not about Baltimore vs. LA.
* Off-coast wind power looks promising; the Marcellus shale is obviously under dispute.
I read "Mars Rover" as "Marv Rover". And yes, one of the proposed superannuated astronauts would be quite likely to be named Marv compared to the astronauts we have nowadays.
the Marcellus shale is obviously under dispute.
Dispute or not, the drills are going.
By which I mean, the long term costs and benefits and under dispute. Whether it's going to be extracted isn't.
There's probably no legal reason I couldn't just get a belt knife.
The Ka Bar (what I currently carry) is nice and cheap. I'm looking at giving the Blackhawk a try. I think I'm going to like the Blackhawk design a bit better.
134: In PA? I follow it mostly from the Maryland perspective; right now we have a moratorium, pending further study, and I believe the MD governor (staunch Dem) was giving a speech recently on the topic.
If you have a link to a general overview of the state of affairs in PA, Moby, I'd be interested. We're interested here. I would assume it's a matter of the legislature passing measures to halt? Or is it the PA Dept. of the Environment needing to issue regulations? There's some stuff about whether individual states' environmental guidelines should govern the situation, or whether the federal EPA should, now that I recall.
It is true that we could all move to climates in which we don't have to use much heat in winter or much A/C in summer.
Geneva. The winters are a bit milder than DC, the summers a bit milder than Maine. But you do have the full compliment of seasons, and if you want real winter, it's just a half hour drive uphill.
There won't be any significant new regulations or laws in PA unless the drill hits satan's ass.
The Republicans don't even want to tax it. The Democrats didn't try to slow things down much when they had power (and they never controlled both houses) and now they are out of office.
I seem to remember the urban carbon footprint stuff mostly coming down to coal-using areas and non-coal-using areas.
139, 140: Okay.
138: Within the US, it would be the Pacific Northwest for me. Probably cooler and wetter than some might like, but that suits my temperament and ancestry. I'd miss the wider range of seasons, though.
Further about 140: Any chance you guys can take back control of both houses up there, or is it a lost cause for the while?
143: I don't know, but it wouldn't stop anything. Probably be better regulated and taxed.
no, you are completely wrong. The LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana area contains plenty of exurbs. Admittedly it doesn't contain the inland empire, but if your point is that somehow this is a false comparison because it only includes an urban core, that's just wrong. Most of the difference in carbon emissions has nothing to do with cars, btw -- it comes from how power is generated and used for things like heating in the winter.
Heat and AC is also about apartments vs. stand alone homes. The former are better all around for heating, the second get less heat from each other, but also don't co-insulate. Plus they tend to have less space to heat or cool. My impression of the LA-Long Beach-Santa Ana (aka LA and Orange County) designation is that by skipping Ventura and the Inland Empire, it's as if you did an NYC metro area of NYC, Long Island, northeastern Jersey (counties bordering the rivershore plus Morris, and Passaic, and Westchester up in NY. None of the stuff up north along the Hudson nor northwestern or central Jersey. That would be a hell of a lot more apartment and transit centric than the existing one.
That's what I mean, though. Better regulated, chiefly. It's not clear to me, anyway, that drilling the Marcellus shale is evil in and of itself, so that it must be stopped entirely: it (just) needs to have the hell regulated out of it, in a very serious fashion, which would put all kinds of roadblocks up to current methods employed, until such time as better, safer, acceptable methods are devised.
Is this pie-in-the-sky, and the shale is going to wind up as fucked up an exercise as the coal industry in, say, the Virginias? Maybe. More studies, at the very least!
145 -- seriously, you're just wrong about that. There's obviously some weirdness in the selection of any MSA, and the urban/suburban/exurban differences works differently generally in the West than the East (broadly speaking, both the suburbs and exurbs are denser in the West, with more completely undeveloped zones) but the greater LA one includes most (though not all) distant LA suburbs and very many stand alone homes.
146: Public and political pressure will hopefully smooth out the worst of it, but nobody is waiting for a study. I have no idea if it will be fucked up or not. Hardly anybody doing the drilling has died so far and that seems a good sign.
149: But does it include the inland empire?
My point is that limiting in that fashion in New York would make it a very apartment centric place. NYC proper of course, plus Hudson, southern Westchester and good chunks of Union and Bergen are all loaded with mid to high rise apartment complexes. Nassau and Western Suffolk are insanely dense single family home settlements, while Eastern Suffolk is the exburbs. Northern Westchester is relatively sparse suburba, while the rest of Jersey are dense suburbia, though not as dense as Nassau. On the other hand the parts that I'm excluding here - points north of Westchester, central Jersey, and northwestern Jersey, are all much less densely populated. Often semi rural.
This just shows that LA is so large and unwieldy that it defies comprehension, forcing people to text while driving in order to maintain some kind of connection to the world.
What is "the same way"? Who cares if you could have drawn the NYC MSA in a slightly different way? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. The MSAs are what they are. There are plenty of "exurbs" included in the LA one; there's not some systematic unfairness towards NYC in drawing those boundaries. It's true that eastern metro areas have many areas of more consistently, yet less densely, populated exurbs than Western ones.
my older daughter (9) was talking to me about whether I'd rather live in the US than narnia, and given my response (some places: yes; others: no!), which parts of the US would I rather live in, and I said I'll like to live in LA. She'd said, in the most "duh?" voice ever: "LAX?" I tried to explain that almost all US airports are equally bad, but I got nowhere. to her credit, LAX really does bite. also, I can't drive. well, I'm not legally entitled to drive, and am also not great at it.
136: hey, I wonder if I can have knives in indonesia? or guns even? that would be sweet. off to run in the pool research indonesian concealed-carry laws.
the Marcellus shale is obviously under dispute.
The specific topic of debate being "Does it look like a bitch?"
then why'd you try to drill it like a bitch?
I...double-commented, and then I removed the double, and now there ain't even one? nemmine, I can't own lots of sweet guns legally in indonesia. I have a really positive feeling about whether I might not be, in fact, able to buy hella guns anyway. well, and to further elaborate on how different narnia is in this regard, not be all fearful about getting instantly ratted out and, not a particularly long while later, executed. if you get my drift. my daughters are some law-abiding little people (and would hate the illegal guns), I think I can blame their dad on this. he wouldn't cheat a parking meter.
god, the bitching you'd hear from him about a plan to buy illegal guns. I could buy them from the local police station and he'd still hate it.
136: bloody hell, you carry that? on duty? legally? I don't even want to think what would happen to a UK copper who went on the beat with a hidden knife.
re: 161
Well...
Hmm, that should be an ordered list.
Hmm, I think we must know different kinds of policeman.
re: 164
I'm thinking specifically of the last few times the Met 'done a naughty', so to speak.
re: 164
You're right of course re: general policy on that sort of thing. I'm just going by what increasingly seems to be standard Met policy: deny it happened, smear victim.
I've got to say, of all the things to be worried a cop had--he's got a fucking gun already, right? He's only going to ever want that knife in the one situation you cut the man some slack, i.e. grappling with some guy. cops fuck up and shoot people they shouldn't all the time (like in that horrible pima swat raid.) I rarely hear about them knifing random innocents. I don't carry a lot of water for cops other than our own, well-trained, reasonable gswift, but having a knife for when shit somehow got hand-to-hand? I won't grudge a man that once I've given him an automatic.
I was afraid of the man who had a gun until I met a man who had a gun and a knife.
having a knife for when you find a warehouse full of drugs, so you cut into one of the packages and taste it. "Cocaine," you say authoritatively.
Haven't you guys seen the movies?
167: well, yes, but if I remember previous posts, he's not only got an automatic but also a taser, a baton and/or a can of pepper spray, and probably a shotgun in the car, a trained hyaena and a Rodent of Unusual Size. I know people who've been to war with fewer weapons than that.
He needs all the other stuff to break up the hyena/R.O.U.S. fights.
he's not only got an automatic but also a taser, a baton and/or a can of pepper spray, and probably a shotgun in the car
That's not uncommon among the general population, is it? Except maybe the baton.
171: the hyena/R.O.U.S. fights.
Hyena: "But I am laughing now."
R.O.U.S: "Why?"
Hyena: "Because I'm not left-handed either."
169: no, he's got to also make a bitter face and say, "this shit is pure."
"Because I'm not left-handed either."
Trainers switched everybody back in the day.
Speaking of hands, somebody needs to make a diagram or something to show how this happened.
173: "You killed my father. Or possibly my mother. It was always difficult to tell. Anyway, whichever it was, prepare to die."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_Hyena#Physical_description
"You killed my father. Or possibly my mother. It was always difficult to tell. Storm.
FTFY.
Hyaena childrearing, while unquestionably gender-blind, isn't entirely to be recommended as a model; they tend to have twins and the first thing the twins generally do after being born is to fight until one of them is killed.
176: My bet is she tried to reach into the deposit slot and her hand got caught by the door and/or pinched by the rollers. The ATM at my bank is capable of admitting much of a hand into the deposit slot. The armored door makes a nice clunking sound when it closes, so I imagine there is considerable force behind it.
180: But the females are as large as the males and have a fake set of male wobblies, so at least there's that. If *somebody* hadn't just depleted the "Storm" joke potential I'd have a go, but no point now really, is there? I'll just sit here then.
178: Storm is Kenny in the 2022 remake of South Park. "Storm does not have widely-known gender identity and that is why he must die repeatedly."
#Laughingatdeath, #Beatingjoketodeath
184.2 is probably a bad precedent.
#Makingthatexplicit
he's not only got an automatic but also a taser, a baton and/or a can of pepper spray
Alameida gets it right. Knife is for when you're rolling around with some guy who's trying to take your gun. All the rest of the stuff is pretty useless for that kind of fight.
They give us the option of carrying two out three of spray, baton, and taser (but one has to be the taser). I took off the baton. IMO the taser makes guys complacent because they think it's a magic bullet and they don't properly handle themselves in a physical confrontation. Awesome example here where crazy dude gets the win and runs off into the night.
Man, he shook off that taser like it was nothing. See ya!
That's because for the taser needs the probe spread to lock up a bunch of muscles. When doing a "drive stun" the probes are like an inch apart. It hurts but that's about it. God what a mess that video is. What the hell is that cop doing pulling his cuffs out when they don't even remotely have that guy under control? Why did the other cop let go of him? Bah.
Knife is for when you're rolling around with some guy who's trying to take your gun. All the rest of the stuff is pretty useless for that kind of fight.
Nah, you just keep rolling till you can set him on fire with one of the Flame-Bursts. There's a popping sound just before that gives you ample warning.
190: Okay, but let's all agree the knife is useless against the lightning sand.
191: Snow sand, you illiterate.
192: It had a different name in the book vs. the movie? Inconceivable!
Back to 185, I'd definitely agree that LAX is the worst major US airport.
Or, you know, 158. And I was talking about XAL.
194: I've never been to LA but if it's worse than Detroit's airport, then that's quite an accomplishment.
I'm excited to be flying out of our rinky-dink airport for the first time next week. On the other hand, it's so rinky-dink that I'm concerned we may not be taking an actual plane. Perhaps a large bird.
Well, the weather is good, so at least there aren't many delays for that reason. But DTW's infrastructure is way better.
LAX is pretty darn horrible. Long Beach, on the other hand, is such an absolute joy I don't know what to do about it.
I don't know what to do about it
Lobby them to provide jetpacks to all comers?
Okay, but let's all agree the knife is useless against the lightning sand.
gswift also patrols with a concealed tactical wheelbarrow.
