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Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

spotthedrowningchild.com

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Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#351

Post by cryptonector »

dotancohen wrote: post #270
cryptonector wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better yet: don't have a private pool.

The houses in my new construction neighborhood all have pools. We deleted the pool and got almost no cash back, so far as I know we were the only family to do so. I'm not carrying that responsibility.

+1.

I don't know why my comment above was downvoted, but we did consider buying a house with a pool when our kids were young, and we decided that the risk was ETOOHIGH, especially given that we have a wonderful community pool in the neighborhood.

Pools are expensive to operate and dangerous to have children around -- your own as well as your guests'.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#352

Post by jmhnilbog »

notRobot wrote: post #338
invisiblerobot wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Is it really "exploitation" in the human sense of taking advantage of someone else? Yes. Obviously. And whether or not the exploitation is "programmed" is irrelevant. After all everything is programmed.

But. If we're observing as humans and it appears to us that the one creature is taking advantage of another, surely that's just our interpretation from a very limited understanding of their world? I have no idea where I'm going with this, but that phrasing still seems off to me.

Human behavior is no more complicated than that of anything else living. We just have more complicated ways to justify our actions.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#353

Post by abiogenesis »

fho wrote: post #137
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most depictions of things in movies are like that. Films must show you something interesting, and watching somebody do trial and error painfully on a bash script for 6 hours is not as fun as a fast pace keyboard murder while screaming "i just passed 3 firewalls" with beautiful animations rendering on the screen. If there is a camera, what you see is a lie. The difference between a national geographic documentary and…

Even national geographic documentaries are probably "lies" ... I just had the chance to get some basic insights in to evolutionary biology ... and boy is bloody mauling and devouring of prey just the tip of the iceberg. Intraspecies rape and infanticide is pretty common out there. (Look up the penis of drakes (male ducks) and why it looks the way it does at some point) Siblings competing for food with only a small pe…

> Even national geographic documentaries are probably "lies"

That's exactly what the OP said.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#354

Post by dlsso »

smileysteve wrote: post #255
ben7799 wrote: post #202

Like others who commented I worked as a life guard and water safety instructor when I was younger. (Everything I am saying pertains to the US only.) I rescued quite a few children, it's hard to see in this video because the video quality is poor and the camera is at an angle that is worse than what the lifeguard in the video is seeing. Overall this victim is fairly active and should not have been very hard to spot in…

> teaching 5 year olds the butterfly and other high energy/low safety strokes without teaching elementary backstroke, breaststroke, sidestroke. I am amazed at how few of my early millennial peers have never heard of the elementary backstroke.

Never heard of this "elementary backstroke" but I'm a pro at "chickenwings, airplane, torpedo."

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#355

Post by rtkwe »

sequoia wrote: post #285

In Toronto, children are tested for swimming ability at each visit to a public pool. Children are given wrist-bands corresponding to their age upon arrival. If a child wishes to swim in the deep end, he or she may ask a guard to give them a swim test (swimming a fixed distance without touching floor or wall). Upon passing the test, the child is given another wrist-band indicating that they may use the deep end. Paren…

Wow I think the only time I've ever had a pool give me a swim test was for Boy Scouts summer camp where it's 75 yards front stroke 25 yards backstroke and then float. Then you get a little tag you place on a board and you always have a swim partner with periodic checks where everyone gets out finds their partner and they count pairs to ensure no one's missing or without a partner.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#356

Post by rootusrootus »

ben7799 wrote: post #202

Like others who commented I worked as a life guard and water safety instructor when I was younger. (Everything I am saying pertains to the US only.) I rescued quite a few children, it's hard to see in this video because the video quality is poor and the camera is at an angle that is worse than what the lifeguard in the video is seeing. Overall this victim is fairly active and should not have been very hard to spot in…

I'm feeling pretty lucky now. My local pool is city owned, and while it probably doesn't get the funding it ought to, the specs seem okay. It's a half olympic size, deep enough (I think -- 3.5 feet at one end, 12 feet at the other), they teach elementary backstroke (among others) starting at the very first level, and while I'm not sure if the lifeguards are all Red Cross certified, I'd be willing to bet they are, since the pool has courses to become a Red Cross certified lifeguard (and it's really not that expensive).

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#357

Post by [deleted] »

irrational wrote: post #318
lm28469 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something similar happened to me as a kid, I decided to swim from our boat to the shore of the lake, got exhausted 100 meters from the shore. Before going in full panic mode I remembered you can basically float indefinitely on your back with very minimal effort and did just that until I was calm and rested. Turns out our mandatory swimming lessons from the age of 8 weren't as useless as I thought.

I think the skill of being able to flip onto your back and scuttle to wherever you need to go is more important than knowing how to swim (and I love to swim - I swam 2 kilometers just this morning). Unless you are in super cold or choppy water you should be just fine.

[deleted]

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#358

Post by arthurcolle »

I almost drowned when I was pretty young (I wanna say 6 years old) might be older though but not by much, when we went on a pool trip when I was in day care or something, can’t really remember what grade you’re in at age six. I went to a deeper end and wasn’t able to grab the edge to pull myself up.

A girl a few years older than I was was able to swim across and push me up. I remember there were two “chaperones” who were just a few feet away from the edge of the pool but they were both facing away.

Terrifying experience, still remember it vividly. Parents kind of laughed it off but I definitely could have died. Definitely teach your kids to swim properly before letting them go to a pool unsupervised is all I’ll say.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#359

Post by mark-r »

ben7799 wrote: post #202

Like others who commented I worked as a life guard and water safety instructor when I was younger. (Everything I am saying pertains to the US only.) I rescued quite a few children, it's hard to see in this video because the video quality is poor and the camera is at an angle that is worse than what the lifeguard in the video is seeing. Overall this victim is fairly active and should not have been very hard to spot in…

There's a resort in Wisconsin Dells that I've been to quite a few times now, with an indoor wave pool. When we started going they had industrial clear inner tubes that you could bring out into it; about half the people in the pool would have a tube. As you say the pool was nearly impossible to monitor as a parent from the sidelines, but there were lifeguards all the way around. Every once in a while they would stop the waves and jump in to pull somebody out - once it was even my own kid! They removed the tubes a couple of years ago.

I was lucky as a kid, my parents kept sending me to swim lessons until I finally got it. I learned early how to do a side stroke, which is so relaxing you can keep it up all day.

Re: Spot the Drowning Child (2015)

#360

Post by sizzle »

This seems like the perfect exercise for computer vision and machine learning/AI to rapidly alert the lifeguard to the drowning child or deploy some sort of scuba robot flotation device that can get to the drowning person before a lifeguard to shave off precious second that can cause brain damage from deoxygenation.
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