571–580 of 622 posts
Can someone just run a plain marathon without having to worry about this in modern civilized life? Come on. This isn't even crime, this is just insanity.
Apparently not. I know it is too early to speculate, but my money is on the muslims -- homegrown terrorists/IRA use car bombs and you couldn't get a car there, crazy people seem overwellmingly to prefer guns.
Slightly off topic, but is anyone else confused by the fact that several runners in this video[1] reacted to the explosion but did not turn and proceeded to keep running? These people weren't exactly leading the pack (at a 4+ hours finish time), so my guess is that they are just severely deprived of nutrients and aren't processing what's happening, but it's still a bit baffling to me why some didn't turn to see what…
If you've ever run a marathon, you'd know. 4 hours is still a pretty decent time for 26 miles and, for most runners, the last leg up to finish line is usually a pretty exhausting/euphoric time. Aside from your own heartbeat and breathing, you really don't notice much else. To me, it looks like they respond physically to the shockwave but are not mentally registering anything other than the finish line.
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well, this is indeed a tricky subject. 1., we don't know if it is terrorism (well, is a loner like breivik a terrorist or "just" running amok?) 2., it might not be over yet. mumbai took 60hours. 3., lots of people nowadays have someone there , a friend, an aquaintance. maybe just an online friend or simple source of joy but yeah, terror spreads through news.
Used to be that a terrorist was defined as someone who likes to further their agenda by means of spreading terror. Explosions, destruction, loss of life - that's all completely incidental to the actual terror. A person running amok, in contrast, may be a terrorist (and people like Breivik certainly fit the bill in some aspects) but their main goal is committing mass murder, usually culminating in suicide. A convincin…
They police are saying, "Don't use your cellphones, as they can set off other devices." Is there real science behind this?
Its things like this that really make me wonder how we can progress as a society with nutjobs like this. Without sounding like a hippy, the world is filled with so much violence and hate. If these people (and they're all over) put more effort into building society instead of destroying we could really progress. It takes a special kind of asshole to do this.
Of course the people who did this have to be separated from society, but any response should be measured even if that seems difficult.
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It'd be lovely, but no amount of societal structure will ever remove them Anti-murder laws don't remove murder, but they do massively lessen it. I'm always perplexed by the idea that unless something is 100% effective, it somehow 'hasn't worked'.
It wasn't a particularly long post, but I directly stated that we need to do we can to help them at the same time that I stated that they're not going away.
I don't have a problem with what you're saying, just that the particular phrase you used is a viewpoint that always puzzles me due to its implied binary status.
In the sturm und drang that has resulted from this tragedy, and the weeks to come of hand wringing about terrorists/crazyfolk/etc across the major news networks, I hope against hope that we can stow our reptilian brains for a brief while… In the 3 hours that have passed since the top comment was made, 205 people in the US have died from heart disease(1), an almost entirely preventable disease. This observation may be…
I've never quite understood that argument. It's not about it being insensitive, just irrelevant. It seems to have an implicit but completely unsupported premise that every death is equal. First, there's age: deaths from heart disease tend to happen at old age. In most cultures, death at old age is considered less tragic than the death of an infant or young adult. Also, there's the perceived "naturality" of death: dea…
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_benefit_analysis
Don't be silly. No one ever does that in a crisis. They just spout platitudes about 'doing everything possible' and never stop to think about what that actually means . And if you point out the implications someone will quickly follow up by assuring you that 'no one would ever do that'. Sometimes I think the greatest weakness of policymakers is the delusion that other policymakers believe what they believe, and for t…
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The Boston Globe @BostonGlobe 34s BREAKING NEWS: Police getting multiple reports of unexploded devices around Boston 3.38 pm Central time. Update: The Boston Globe @BostonGlobe 28s RT @billy_baker: "It's not safe to be here." - Boston Police evacuating Commonwealth Avenue mall at Gloucester. 3.45 Central time. Update: The Boston Globe @BostonGlobe 1m Boston Police: If anyone knows of any information call about exp…
NBCNEWS: "Boston police say there was no specific intelligence warning of any kind of attack, and federal officials tonight say there is no reason to think that this is part of any larger threat. At this point they believe it is confined to Boston, but a meeting tonight will decide whether any kind of national alert will be sent out. There is no suspect in custody, authorities say, but some people are being questione…
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Don't be silly. No one ever does that in a crisis. They just spout platitudes about 'doing everything possible' and never stop to think about what that actually means . And if you point out the implications someone will quickly follow up by assuring you that 'no one would ever do that'. Sometimes I think the greatest weakness of policymakers is the delusion that other policymakers believe what they believe, and for t…
The army, FEMA, the Red Cross, EMT doctrines; they all teach cost benefit analysis in emergency decision making.