Check out this adv.

[Buck]

St Canard wrote:
> Ever noticed how the average North Amerian life expectancy has been
> increasing pretty steadily?
>
> According to this, http://policyresearch.gc.ca/page.asp?pagenm=v6n2_art_05
> the average Canadian can expect to live 11 years longer now than they did
> 50 years ago.
>
> That's an aggregate number, that in part answers your question. How did we
> live? Because we didn't die. Fortunately, with all the realizations we
> have made in the last 1/2 century, more people are also managing to live to
> a ripe old age. Thus average life for the population is longer.


And yet, we are acting younger:

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hsage134302919jun13,0,1956760.story

-Buck

 

[Claire Petersky]

Maggie wrote in message
<[email protected]>...

> I should have been playing with Barbie Dolls.

Yeah, I had fun with Barbie: pushing pins into her head; decapitating the
blond and the black one, and switching heads; rubbing her tits against the
pavement to see what would happen if they wore off; (obligatory bike content
here tying her just right to the spokes of my bike so she'd make this cool
ticka-ticka noise when I rode up and down our street...I remember when my
mom got me a new type that could bend her legs, and I had lots of fun
hyper-extending her at the knees to make her look like a freak.

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/
See the books I've set free at:
http://bookcrossing.com/referr­al/Cpetersky

 

[brucianna]

Maggie wrote:
> brucianna wrote:
> >
> > In the developed countries (as opposed to developing) it is no longer a
> > fact of life. We've lost the "death happens" attitude.

> One thing I disagree with in your post. We have not lost the "death
> happens" attitude. I think we are more attuned to the fact that "life
> is short", "we could be dead tomorrow", and "We are not going to live
> forever" philosphy than ever before.

This, despite the fact that life is generally longer than before.

> Parents are in constant fear of
> something happening to their children more than ever before.

Because they no longer have the "death happens" attitude.

I don't know about you, but in my experience of the United States if a
4 year old was run over by a car driven by an unlicensed driver
speeding in front of his preschool it would be all over the news.
There would be public outcry. There would be grief counselors for his
classmates. And for the children and teachers who were outside who SAW
IT HAPPEN.

But, in under a week it was shrugged off, because that sort of thing
happens. That's the reality of my host country. Death happens. Get
over it. Get on with life.

> Now children are scheduled,
> picked up at school, and carefully monitored. Is that a loss of the
> "death happens" attitude? There is more worry today about death,
> accidents, and tragedy than ever before in my opinion. We have become
> a fearful nation.

Exactly. We no longer accept that death is a natural part of life. Go
to a 19th century cemetary. Look at all the miniature headstones for
children under 5. Count how high a percentage of the people buried
there died before they were 10. Before they were 20. Before they were
50.

More than ever we fear the reaper. Because he doesn't come nearly as
often.

 

[Rich]

Mark Hickey wrote:

> On a related note, I've read that the backlash against DDT has
> actually probably killed MANY more people than the "dangerous
> insecticide" ever would have.

I recall reading and/or seeing someing along those lines as well.
Evidently given the bad name DDT got by the mass spraying done in the
U.S., it's no longer used in the little quantities it once was in 3rd
world countries. As a result, misquito populations went up and malaria
with it. Or something along those lines.

Rich

 

[Rich]

Maggie wrote:
>
> brucianna wrote:
>
>>In the developed countries (as opposed to developing) it is no longer a
>>fact of life. We've lost the "death happens" attitude.
>>
> One thing I disagree with in your post. We have not lost the "death
> happens" attitude.

I think we no long accept "death happens to children". In the old days
(pre 1900s), childhood issues and illnesses killed off kids left and
right. I think it accepted that you'd have 5 or 6 and 1 would die.

In developed countries, people now only have 2 kids, medical technology
gets them almost all of them past the first few years that used to be so
dangerous, and now we dont' want to let them die to some stupid
accident. So we're super-cautious.

Until they're 16 anyway, then our brains shut down, we buy them a car
(they NEED it to get to school/work, right), and they kill themselves...
They're safer on a bike at 16.

Rich

 

[[email protected]]

brucianna wrote:
>
>
> Helmets, car seats, not riding on handlebars, rubber mats on
> playgrounds, and all these other safety measures are our way of
> mentally fighting the reaper.
>
> As the safety measures become more and more complicated the number of
> injuries prevented become statistically more insignificant compared to
> the amount of money spent BUT when you or one of your loved ones has
> been one of those statistics you suddenly find that it isn't so
> insignificant after all.

There's been talk here about "risk compensation" - the fact that, given
protective equipment, people tend to take on riskier behavior. ("Come
on, Tommy, jump! It's OK, you big sissy, there's rubber padding on the
ground!")

But I think there's another odd "compensation" effect, something like
"worry compensation." Parents used to worry about kids dying of
smallpox, dysentery, influenza, pneumonia, horse tramplings, war...

The emotions that went into those worries have been conserved, and now
go into worrying about much more trivial, or much less common, events.
"Johnny, that cut could get infected by flesh-eating bacteria!!!"
"Suzy, there could be an abductor behind any telephone pole!!!"

The real problem, in my view, is that these magnified worries are
diminishing life for so many people, and especially for so many kids.
Bicycling is now "dangerous." So is sledding. So is walking to the
library on your own. So is playing in the woods. Camp out in the back
yard? Are you crazy???

Soon the only "safe" place may be sitting in front of the TV. And I
know, for many kids, it's already reached that point.

- Frank Krygowski

 

[gds]

[email protected] wrote:
>
> There's been talk here about "risk compensation" - the fact that, given
> protective equipment, people tend to take on riskier behavior. ("Come
> on, Tommy, jump! It's OK, you big sissy, there's rubber padding on the
> ground!")
>
> But I think there's another odd "compensation" effect, something like
> "worry compensation." Parents used to worry about kids dying of
> smallpox, dysentery, influenza, pneumonia, horse tramplings, war...
>
> The emotions that went into those worries have been conserved, and now
> go into worrying about much more trivial, or much less common, events.
> "Johnny, that cut could get infected by flesh-eating bacteria!!!"
> "Suzy, there could be an abductor behind any telephone pole!!!"
>
> The real problem, in my view, is that these magnified worries are
> diminishing life for so many people, and especially for so many kids.
> Bicycling is now "dangerous." So is sledding. So is walking to the
> library on your own. So is playing in the woods. Camp out in the back
> yard? Are you crazy???
>
> Soon the only "safe" place may be sitting in front of the TV. And I
> know, for many kids, it's already reached that point.


Those are interesting and valid points. There seems to be an increasing
inability to evaluate and separate out objective risk vs. subjective
risk. As you say many objective risks have been greatly reduced over
the last couple of generations. Anti bacterial drugs and a range of
vaccines have reduced what had been the major risk to life- infectious
desease- to much more modest levels. And certainly the physical injury
risks we face are far less than workers of 100 years ago.

Your idea of "worry compensation" is interesting. I wonder if it is
also affected by having more time available to worry as well as the
demographic trends to delay having children and to having less children
per family (on average).

 

[Maggie]

gds wrote:
I wonder if it is
> also affected by having more time available to worry as well as the
> demographic trends to delay having children and to having less children
> per family (on average).

This reminds me of a "first child" as compared to a "third child" My
first son was overprotected. When it was cold he was the kid bundled up
in three layers of clotes with a snowsuit on top. I took him to the
emergency room for every little thing. I worried, I over worried. I
got up at night to see if he was breathing.

By the time I had my third child.....I threw a blanket over him to get
my other two to school on time in the middle of winter. His socks never
matched and I don't think I woke up at night to see if he was
breathing. I was too exhausted. But through it all my third kid never
got sick. My oldest (the one I overprotected, would get cold after
cold).

I see people today who wait a long time to have a child, then they have
one. They raise the kid by the book. Overdress them. Overprotect
them. And Worry about the most ridiculous things. My one niece takes
her child to specialists whenever she reads something and thinks the
kid is not developing correctly. She has too much time to think about
one kid. I do not understand how "the only child" survives their
parents. If I had stopped at one child, god only knows how much more
damage I would have done to his poor psyche. My daughter was the
middle child, squashed between two brothers, so she learned to be
tough. My third kinda raised himself. It is true. Parents have one
child and too much time to worry about them. Kids need space. Kids
cannot be smothered. It screws them up. Just my humble opinion. Glad
I was not an "only child"

Maggie.

 

[Jim Smith]

"Buck" <[email protected]> writes:

> Jim Smith wrote:
>> Frank wrote:
>> > Sorry, but I can't condone spraying DDT. The biological effects are
>> > disastrous. There's no doubt, AFAIK, about the effect of DDT on
>> > raptors, for one thing.
>>
>> Right. It is not a simple situation. DDT is non-toxic to humans, but
>> poisonous to critters other than mosquitos. It also is persistant,
>> with a half life on the ground of 10-15 years. It is still used in
>> some countries for mosquito control, where the risk from malaria is
>> deemed to outweigh the environmental hazards. Also, because of the
>> way DDT works, it is also easy for resistance to develop, and this
>> has, in fact, happend in India and other places. DDT is not a panacea
>> for malaria. With our current knowledge, indiscriminate use no longer
>> makes sense.
>
> Here's a neat study on malaria that shows the value of simple controls
> and sophisticated tecniques to test their effectiveness:
>
> http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0405/malaria1of2.html

Interesting. Thanks for that.