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Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

theguardian.com

411–420 of 569 posts

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#411
post #213

"If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost, just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature—a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price. Weakness? It might be the unique strength that w…

Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year? Every 3 minutes we lose more children then were in the cave. We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.

"Obesity a bigger problem than world hunger, Lancet study says"

https://www.smh.com.au/healthcare/obesity-a-bigger-problem-t...

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#412
post #212
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling for prison without knowing much is very harsh. We don't know if the coach led them in or if he just followed them. We don't know how far in they went initially. Maybe they just went a bit inside the cave and then increasing water levels forced them further in. At least he stayed with the boys. Imagine if no adult had been there. Blaming the coach for the death of the rescue diver is completely uncalled for. T…

Agree, but I wonder if he even checked the weather forecast before getting into a cave. Which even for a complete amateur like me seems to be the most basic precaution (along with notifying someone that I am going there).

Weather forecast in Thailand is not very accurate, even in Bangkok let alone the rural areas. Even the public radar in Chiang Rai[1] (from the Thai Meteorological Department) has a disclaimer[2] that it’s not accurate in mountain areas.

Even during the rescue, the forecast said Chiang Rai was going to have a heavy rain for the whole week (thus the reason they started the operation few days ago), but it has been pretty dry so far.

[1] http://weather.tmd.go.th/cri.php

[2] http://weather.tmd.go.th/disclaimer.html

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't try to learn about controversial political topics there. The amount of editorial wars going on is stuggering - and the worst of it, you won't be able to tell when you're looking at a propaganda piece instead of an objective article because you need prior knowledge for that, and Wikipedia is exactly the place where people get their prior knowledge.

I trust Wikipedia for basic historical information, biographies etc. I feel sad that encylopedias and their peer reviews have been obliterated as a definitive source of knowledge and replaced by something which has a questionable editorial model. I use Wikipedia a lot but don't see it as a 'gold standard' of verified information. It seems a lot people do... https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-…

The editorial model seems to work pretty well for things which aren't controversial, and unlike old-style encyclopedias, you can see the edits made and the discussions behind them. With Britannica, you basically just had to trust them.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#414
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read somewhere they thought it was quite shorter than the 9-10 days. Which is the opposite of what I would have thought.

Your circadian cycle gets wacky without sunlight to regulate it. I've talked to cavers that say they need to set alarm clocks otherwise they will be inside the cave for days without noticing (thinking it's hours), which can be quite dangerous if you're not getting hydrated. https://books.google.com.br/books?id=8WrmCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA154&l...

Interesting article: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/the-caves...

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#415
post #213

"If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost, just as many volunteers turn out. Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature—a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price. Weakness? It might be the unique strength that w…

Yet who shows up for the 3.1 million children who die of malnutrition every year? Every 3 minutes we lose more children then were in the cave. We can comprehend 13 people and the struggle against nature, while the scope of world hunger is far too complex and emotionally incomprehensible to mobilize enough people.

but you have to admit humanity has made great progress in reducing extreme poverty over the last 40 years.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#416
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean to "promote capitalism"?

Basically buying stuff made in poor countries. This (more than literally anything else) has made a staggering improvement in the lives of hundreds of millions of people over the last few decades.

> Basically buying stuff made in poor countries.

Capitalism is also farm subsidies, tax breaks and other corporate handouts given by rich nations that destroy the farming industries in poor countries. Capitalism (as currently practised, or in its purest, unregulated form) is not an untarnished 'good' by itself.

This is without considering how capital is leveraged to the detriment of anything protecting poor people in order to extract more profits (by lobbying, quid-pro-quo deals, or threats to stop investments). See the recent insane row over breastfeeding vs. formula at the UN, and what force was brought to bear on Nicaragua.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Near" tragedy? A man died.

I suggest reading the book "Shadow Divers" for a look at some of the professional diving culture. It's super interesting. This death is definitely horrible. However, reading Shadow Divers also made me think that any cave divers take on high risk every time they swim, and that this death - while tragic - is a risk this person confronted long before the incident.

Just wanted to point out that diving culture as described in 'Shadow Divers' is pretty much as far from professional as it gets. What the book does describe is east coast deep wreck diving community of the early 1990s. In which I suspect it does a good job at. And how they pushed the limits before mixed gas diving / non-open circuit scuba equipment was well understood or widely available outside military and possibly some commercial outfits.

That said, the book is great read. Especially if you're into diving. It's just that it should not be read as a role model for anything but reckless regard of ones life.

Not to drift completely off-topic, here is a link to a long thread about Thailand cave rescue from the cave diving forums[1].

[1] http://www.cavediver.net/forum/showthread.php/35242-Football...

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider places that try industrialism without capitalism: do they perform worse than those with both? I think the answer is yes, by far. For example, there's plenty of communist countries that had industrialism but failed to grow economically as much as capitalist peers as examples. I'm unaware of many (any?) examples counter to this.

We are at max depth but to address the perceived lack of a shred of capitalism in the USSR, I can't help but point to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy which was espoused by Lenin himself and included a large component of free market capitalism. It was the efforts undertaken by Stalin in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakization th…

I agree there was some capitalism, as there is components of it in every economy. Similarly, every economy has mixtures of other systems in it. The issue is how much of the various systems an economy allows. Certainly Soviet Russia was not considered a capitalist system, whereas most of Western Europe and the US were during that period.

Your link provides a nice graph [1] showing that USSR and many countries that were capitalist had similar GDP per capita in 1913, but diverged wildly over the following years. I suspect academic has such a graph including more countries along with some rating of how the underlying economic system worked. It would be interesting to see that. I am aware of a decent amount of economic literature that does credit capitalism as a major force for pulling billions out of poverty.

Your page seems to back up my point, does it not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_Union_USSR_GDP_per...

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it even good for medical conditions, condensed history of major events, understanding geography and biography of actors, sportspersons and politicians. Actually, isn't it the * best * first website to learn about anything?

> I find it even good for medical conditions As in you read several books about a medical condition, and then see what Wikipedia says about it? Because if you just start by reading the Wikipedia article, you'd have no idea whether it's wrong or not. (It's usually wrong.)

Is it? Why on earth don't you fix it when you see that? You don't even need an account, if that's what your worried about.

I'm surprised at the idea though, and pretty skeptical that it's actually the case since I would have assumed many others with medical knowledge would also have noticed, and one of them would have corrected things eventually.

Re: Thailand cave rescue: all 12 boys and coach successfully rescued

#420
post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is 3000 a low enough number? There are 3000 children in concentration camps in the USA separated from their parents. Edit: yes, I have chosen the words concentration camps to evoke the sceptre of the Holocaust. Also note my grandmother is still alive and an Auschwitz survivor. We. have. seen. this. before! 1. Classification 2. Symbolization 3. Discrimination 4. Dehumanization 5. Organization 6. Polarization 7. Prepar…

not really if you actually pay attention to border patrol, you will see that these kids have left horrible conditions and many are not separated from parents but from strangers using them to get in or for drug smuggling. some dont even have any parents or family with them. ICE also saves the most lives on the border

Do you have any data proving that a significant percentage of these kids are being used by strangers?
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