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Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

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Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#391

Post by _heimdall »

rbanffy wrote: post #381
_heimdall wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why healthcare specifically, and where so you draw the line? Are you okay with democratically elected officials making any decision for the people as they see fit?

Don’t they do that when they make laws?

Well that's effectively my point? Are you okay with elected officials having the power to write whatever law they wish simply because they were democratically elected?

Surely there must be a line and you aren't granted the elected body control to do literally whatever they want.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#392

Post by protocolture »

xeyownt wrote: post #174
protocolture wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have nuanced views on both. I am gonna go ahead and assume theres no freedom you wouldn't give away for safety if the government justified it in the right way.

It's not that simple. Rules do not necessarily reduce freedom, they can in fact even provide more freedom on the longer term, when the system finds a new balance. The difficulty of course is to find the proper rules and evaluate these effects from current system state.

>Rules do not necessarily reduce freedom, they can in fact even provide more freedom on the longer term

Back to my point above that there are laws and regulations that are fine, and then theres the pre-crime nonsense trying to reduce risk to zero that are being peddled today.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#393

Post by msisk6 »

jtbayly wrote: post #315
msisk6 wrote: post #63

I recently moved to the St. Louis area for a software job at Boeing. I'm actually in a nice quiet neighborhood in St. Charles right under the flight path for planes landing at Lambert Field. The fireworks last night were insane. All around me folks were setting off commercial grade fireworks bursting hundreds of feet in the air. The house was shaking, my dogs were freaking out, one of them had a seizure. The air was…

Given your statement of "hundreds of feet" I guess I can take the rest of your post with a large pinch of salt, too.

I don't know fireworks that well, but these appeared to be the commercial type, with a large lift-charge that lights the sky up with a lightning style flash followed by a sky burst and the house-shaking boom of the sort I usually associate with shows put on the city or whatnot. I had two of these "shows" going on just north of me and one to the south.

And I have a pretty good idea of heights around here. I mentioned I work at Boeing on flying things so I track the ones that fly over me. They're usually about 1000 to 1500 ft. AGL on approach when they go over my house and about 200 knots. Southwest has the most flights into and out of St. Louis so it's usually a 737, and those have a wingspan of just over 100 feet on the newer models.

So yeah, I'd say these fireworks were going up at least 300 feet.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#394

Post by inigyou »

lwansbrough wrote: post #368
inigyou wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cops have arrest quotas to meet - they don't mind arresting you too.

They actually do mind, which is why they don’t do it. Did you forget the reality of the situation? They mind because they are completely outnumbered. Policing only works if you can point out a small minority and say “these people are causing harm to the majority of us”. With something like fireworks (or cannabis protests in many places) the police are severely outnumbered and they don’t have enough room in their jail…

Are you really planning to stage a riot over fireworks being banned? And you have enough co-conspirators to outpower the police?

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#396

Post by fy20 »

As a European reading these comments I never would have expected fireworks in the US to regulated at all. In my country you can buy whatever you want. The most popular time to use them is at New Year, and even in supermarkets they have popup stalls selling then. If you go out at midnight you can see fireworks in every direction.

I live in a capital city thats surrounded by forest. I've never heard of any forest fires caused by them, but I guess it's because winter - we often have snow that time of year.

It definately has a big effect on air quality though, the smell of gunpowder lingers until the next day. We are far from the sea so there is little wind that time of year, and the cold temperatures cause the smoke to stay close to the ground (same issue with wood burning stoves which are common in older houses).

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#397

Post by jtbayly »

msisk6 wrote: post #393
jtbayly wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given your statement of "hundreds of feet" I guess I can take the rest of your post with a large pinch of salt, too.

I don't know fireworks that well, but these appeared to be the commercial type, with a large lift-charge that lights the sky up with a lightning style flash followed by a sky burst and the house-shaking boom of the sort I usually associate with shows put on the city or whatnot. I had two of these "shows" going on just north of me and one to the south. And I have a pretty good idea of heights around here. I mentioned…

My apologies. Apparently my own estimate about how high fireworks generally go was way off.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#398

Post by jandrewrogers »

dmurray wrote: post #193
jandrewrogers wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old school whistling fireworks were often based on picrate chemistry. Picrates famously have the ability when burned to hover between normally deflagration and true detonation; the whistling is a side effect of this. One of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history (see below) was a picrate explosion. These aren’t used anymore for safety reasons; they don’t have a great stability profile and picrates are true…

Have advances in explosives, fuses and quality control made fireworks safer in the last 40 years? Or perhaps the safety improvements are offset by sellers now offering bigger fireworks (either because those are now actually safe and both buyers and sellers are more comfortable with them, or just because of a general hedonic improvement). Or perhaps they are safer for their users, but worse for starting fires or inter…

I think the improvements in consumer fireworks safety has been incremental. The fuses are more reliable, they’ve reduced the use of mercury and other heavy metals in pyrotechnics, and they’ve moved toward more stable chemistries. That said, I think regulation is marginal at best so who knows what a random firework will actually do. There are also practical constraints on the kinds of chemistries that make good fireworks e.g. you don’t want potential high-explosives to be something you can buy over-the-counter by the kilo.

There is a parallel in military explosives research. For example, the US military is slowly moving toward “insensitive munitions” which use explosive chemistries that are nearly impossible to detonate accidentally due to fire or impact. This originated in nuclear weapons research but has spread to other weapon systems.

Fireworks are intrinsically dangerous in the hands of incompetence, ignorance, or stupidity. No amount of engineering can solve that problem unfortunately.

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#399

Post by master-lincoln »

_heimdall wrote: post #391
rbanffy wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t they do that when they make laws?

Well that's effectively my point? Are you okay with elected officials having the power to write whatever law they wish simply because they were democratically elected? Surely there must be a line and you aren't granted the elected body control to do literally whatever they want.

the line is the constitution

Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July

#400

Post by JCharante »

lwansbrough wrote: post #368
inigyou wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cops have arrest quotas to meet - they don't mind arresting you too.

They actually do mind, which is why they don’t do it. Did you forget the reality of the situation? They mind because they are completely outnumbered. Policing only works if you can point out a small minority and say “these people are causing harm to the majority of us”. With something like fireworks (or cannabis protests in many places) the police are severely outnumbered and they don’t have enough room in their jail…

you don't have to arrest everyone, just make the likelyhood of being arrested non-zero to deter people
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