TLDR America’s most remarkable kid didn't know how to swim at age 14 and drowned while kayaking not wearing life jacket
I dunno, but I find that remarkably stupid, but I guess US has different standards for what's remarkable.
A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah
141–150 of 196 posts
Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah
#142I hate this story and I hate most of the comments here. I homeschooled. I know a lot about homeschooling and giftedness and yadda. People who don't know anything about homeschooling and the myriad ways it differs from public school and private school -- it's a little like a bunch of Christians commenting on the life of a Muslim individual, having never studied their religion or culture or a bunch of Europeans in big…
I’ve been curious about homeschoolers and their perceptions and interactions with age ranges. I’ve heard criticisms about weird social distortions that manifest from the whole age stratification we find in schools through the grade system. Basically the values and preferences of a given age take on exaggerations among a bunch of peers that don’t get tempered by the opinions and thoughts from older peers and others ou…
I don't know that I really understand what you are trying to say. Simultaneously, I feel like the answer to the question is probably "It's far worse than you think."
You take, say, 30 kids who happen live in the same area and are born within a particular year and shove them together in a class and they are all being shaped by the same teacher, the same curriculum, the same school system, their parents may know each other or may not etc.
I think you are likely attributing overly much to the children per se and not to the forces shaping a group of children. And I think we have done a lot of harm to how humans think about age differences generally. I feel like as a society we have an excess of baggage concerning dating someone of a different age, as just one example.
Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah
#143This story is especially clear and dramatic (and well documented) but I've often thought this happens in every generation: the people who lead (businesses and nations) when they are in their 40s and 50s are often people who boldly go out and discover the world while they are in their teens and 20s, and so they take on a bit more risk than the average citizen, and this includes physical risk (whether in travel or info…
>(One of my favorite anecdotes on this subject: One of the best entrepreneurs I know went down to Mexico and hitchhiked all over when she was 18 years old. And every family that picked her up told her that what she was doing was very dangerous and that she was very lucky to be picked up by that family, instead of someone more dangerous. But at the time she was very innocent. 20 years later I ran into her and I was li…
Likewise my 2nd generation German-American aunt hitchhiked by herself from Morocco to Cairo (and spent time in many, many places in-between) in the 1970's for about 6 months and had no issues at the time.
Places certainly do change.
Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah
#144This story is especially clear and dramatic (and well documented) but I've often thought this happens in every generation: the people who lead (businesses and nations) when they are in their 40s and 50s are often people who boldly go out and discover the world while they are in their teens and 20s, and so they take on a bit more risk than the average citizen, and this includes physical risk (whether in travel or info…
Fortune favors the bold, history is written by the victors. The other stories usually don't get told.
>history is written by the victors.
History is interpreted by historians, from many sources (newspapers, findings, books, mindset etc), history is NOT "written" but interpreted, and that interpretation can change massively with just one new found source of information.
Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah
#145I feel like there is a huge elephant in the room here of how shitty Utah’s support system evidently is. No money to assist his disabled parents and his autistic brother. This whole family was living in desperate, grinding poverty, and that gave this kid a super strong urge to try and get out of it instead of having a childhood.
I disagree with this sentiment. You wish to take away the very condition which made him uniquely special. He seems like he was enjoying his childhood. Adversity breeds character and this kid had more than character than some entire classrooms.
Nothing romantic about poverty and misery.
Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea, we grew up pretty rural and we sold rabbits, goats, even horses as kids. We also traded them for equipment like ATVs, guns, or whatever we needed. OP has never left the city and so just assumes his life is all life. Even his statement 'do we ' just assumes we all believe as he does. Cole also probably did what many young business owners do and put it in his parent's names. Much of this is common place for countr…
He sold rabbits to restaurants located in California, which excludes the local rural-only argument.
I don’t see the insurmountable barriers in that.
This is speculation, but most likelly he found someone who knew how to do that. In effect he was selling his rabits locally to a middleman, who sold the rabit meat in California to restaurants. And when the story gets told this get to be abbreviated to “sold rabbits to restaurants in California”.
Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Life jackets exist for a reason. They save people who can't swim!" Just wanted to add that they save folks that can swim as well. A lot of folks can swim a little, but not enough to get to shore if they are in the middle of a lake and wouldn't handle a current really well. Heck, even if you swim well, exhaustion is a danger. Life jackets help folks. Period.
To tack onto this a little, I can easily swim across a lake, but when I tried swimming in a peaceful looking patch of open ocean, I could barely keep my head above water. Play it safe out there!
I was taught as a child to avoid "peaceful patches of ocean" as they can be rips (currents) that pull you out to sea.
The other lesson repeatedly drummed into us by our mother is to never jump into water without checking it first. There are also many stories of people becoming paralysed after diving into water.
The last lesson is to be careful of people drowning. If you get too close they can grab onto you, pulling you underwater and cause you to drown. If someone is drowning, either grab them from behind, or use a stick or I guess be at a distance where they can't pull you under.
One last lesson I learnt as a kid was to stay clear of dogs swimming - if they get too close they can claw you while doggy paddling.
Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Life jackets exist for a reason. They save people who can't swim!" Just wanted to add that they save folks that can swim as well. A lot of folks can swim a little, but not enough to get to shore if they are in the middle of a lake and wouldn't handle a current really well. Heck, even if you swim well, exhaustion is a danger. Life jackets help folks. Period.
To tack onto this a little, I can easily swim across a lake, but when I tried swimming in a peaceful looking patch of open ocean, I could barely keep my head above water. Play it safe out there!
> I could barely keep my head above water
This is no longer about the original topic, instead I'm going off on a tangent inspired by your comment.
I'm curious if you could do something with this short comment: I only really felt I "got" swimming when I felt as comfortable under as above water, and more importantly, dynamically mixing the two. As long as my swimming mode, in the early days. concentrated on staying above water, from today's point of view it was maybe the quarter of the way to swimming safely at most.
Staying completely submerged during swimming while you don't need air saves a lot of energy, you can just swim through big ocean waves without being bothered, etc. Also, being used to spending most of the time completely submerged makes it easier to deal with when it happens accidentally.
A swimmer trying to keep their head above the water at all times, I don't think that this works very well unless conditions (of oneself too) are ideal or close to it.
Even then, I think I heard it in one American astronaut's interview about his training, additional high-stress training under water that you can't usually get because it has to be well managed by other people including safety divers, would still be missing from a normal person's experience. As a new diver I got into a very mild panic only once, fortunately close enough to shore (California kelp forests off a Monterey beach), and it was bad enough. I would not want to be caught in some eddy unable to surface with mounting alarm. Still, being comfortable doing most of the swimming submerged already is a huge step up from head-above-water mode swimming.
One should also have reviewed the local water currents and what to do when one is caught, but that's another issue.
Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Within this comparison, will the various children of Musk or Gates or Buffet be as memoriable as their parents, or will they end up like the Kennedys, where yeah they exist and probably have a bunch of money, but they're "not important".
I'd guess those children will be even less important than the Kennedys. Among the voting public, last name recognition plays a large role. When publicly traded companies choose a CEO, last name recognition is much less important. Gates is also giving away almost all his wealth so his kids won't get it. For the others, inheritance tax will take a significant fraction, and the money will be divided between multiple chi…
I'll believe it when I see it.
During the timeframe where he said he'd give away half of his money he did spend a whole lot on charity(idk if it was half of the initial amount but i doubt it) and avoided a lot of taxes that way but he also tripled his wealth. He's also the biggest single person landowner in the US I think which I don't see him handing over soon.
Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah
#150Okay so, I have to say, at first this was a pretty feel-bad story for me. I then noticed a tidbit of information in another article about it that somehow made me feel different: Cole Summers didn't know how to swim. He was out on the water in a kayak, with no life jacket, with only an autistic child for company - and didn't know how to swim. Somehow it stopped feeling like a tragic accident and more like carelessness…
It's hard to hear about any 14 year old boy dying, particularly one with such promise. To salve our feelings, to make sense of it, it might feel important to grasp some detail that makes it not so tragic. Resist doing that. It was a tragic accident.
Going on the water, without knowing how to swim and drowning is NOT a tragic accident.
It's like going to jump with a parachute, by yourself, having never done so before.
It's a stupid, stupid risk and dying is not accidental or unexpected.