On Aug 27, 9:05 am,
[email protected] wrote:
> On Aug 27, 1:57 am, Woody Brison <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Aug 21, 5:07 pm, Festivus <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > But I don't have any problem with allowing personal choice in any of
> > > this. Motorcycle helmets, seat belts, whatever - once you hit 18, you
> > > ought to be able to make your own call.
>
> > If all individuals paid for their own hospitalization,
> > that'd be fine, but we pay as a group. Insurance premiums
> > and taxes. It makes sense to try to protect the group
> > from excessive levies.
>
> Let's see: In the US, there are only about 750 fatalities from
> bicycling in a year -
So I'd guess there must be a commensurate number of
serious injuries. Let's define 'serious' for the moment
as "expensive". How many? 3X? 4X? That would be 3000
serious injuries. How serious? Let's guess $10,000
average seriousness. That's $30M a year. But the vast
majority of cyclists must have insurance. So the levy
on the public might be somewhere in the range of 3 to 6
M$ a year. Each person's share of that is about 1 or 2
cents per year. I'd not call that a heavy levy. I'd
say, if we can decide that bike helmets really help,
then I personally would wear one - usually, but I'd
hate to get a ticket if I skipped the helmet one day
to ride 6 blocks over to my friend's. I think maybe
this mandatory helmet law isn't all that good an idea.
>...a figure roughly equal to the deaths from poison
> gases. But there are hundreds of thousands of fatalities each year
> from heart disease; from stroke; from lung disease.
So let's have a universal no smoking law. It costs me
400 to 800 dollars a year in defraying medical expenses
for smokers.
> Major causes of medical expenses in this country are lack of exercise
> and obesity.
Chewing is exercise!
> About 40,000 motorists die each year, most from head injuries.
It may eventually be possible to get robots to drive the
vehicles. I don't think that area's getting enough focus.
The technical problem itself is almost trivial, it's the
social acceptance, funding, legals, etc. People want the
robot to drive them from A to B while they sleep, but it
would be a tremendous advance if we could just tell the
computer to drive along this road here and don't hit
anything. Tell it turn here, park there.
>... Tens
> of thousands of people are killed due to falls while just walking
> around their own homes.
Well, that makes me scratch my head. Whoa! I scratched
my head! Flesh eating bacteria!!!
At some point we have to find a way to rely on good old
unvarnished American natural sunshiny innocent Common
Sense. I just don't see any other way around it.
> So quit hiding your private information!
Yumpin' Yiminy, yes sir! I mean no sir! What
information do I need to furnish about my privates.
>... We demand to know your age,
You know my age. It's in every data base.
> your weight,
That depends on the situation. In orbit, it's zero.
During launch it could be several tons. What you
really want to know is my mass. Believe it or not,
I've known ROCKET SCIENTISTS to get that confused.
>... your percent body fat,
Depends on which part of my body. Some parts are pretty
lean and other parts get quite fat at times.
>... your diet in detail for the past
> six months (including whether you eat meat),
I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday,
how in Sam Hill am I going to be able to detail out
six months? Couldn't you want something else?
>... the amount of alcohol you
> consume,
That's easy. Zero. I'm a Mormon.
>... and how much time you spend in contact with cigarette smoke.
Well, about six minutes a year. If I have to go into
a bar to ask directions. But since smokers smoke into
the atmosphere, and since that's the source of breath
for most of us, you might be able to guess this answer.
> We want to know how many hours you drive in a year,
Hours? minutes would probably be a better unit.
>... and how many hours
> you swim.
I used to swim a lot, like an hour a day. But I was
getting so many infections that I decided the rec center
pool is having just too many bodies in it. So I went to
my second-best exercise, cycling. I'm thinking of
getting one of those job things so I can buy my own pool.
>... We want to know whether you live in a place that has those
> ridiculously hazardous things called "stairs,"
Yeah but I only touch them going up.
>... and whether you wear a
> helmet when walking down them.
I don't walk down. I launch from the top step and land on
the landing below. Fun! Until the lumbar disks fail.
>... We want to know what caused the death
> of each of your relatives.
Relatives? I don't have any. They all dead.
>... We want to know whether you ever play
> basketball (the number one recreational reason for visiting an ER).
Well, I did take my daughter out and showed her the
basics. Haven't been able to move my right arm since.
> And before you decide to do something really risky - like ride a
> motorcycle, or go up in a light plane - we want you to clear it with
> all of us here. Get our permission first, dammit!
>From my observation on this thread alone - I don't even
remember how I wandered onto it - there isn't likely to
be agreement on much of anything, not even on the laws
of logic, let alone whether heavier-than-air flight is
possible for me. I think heavy thoughts!
> Because all those things are probably worse than bicycling. And it
> makes sense to try to protect the group from excessive levies. Right?
Right. Address the bigger problems first. I think we
could schedule this bike helmet thing for discussion
again in about 2525.
Wood
