Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 

Moderators: dandelion, philnic
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
Why?
 Login/Join
 
posted
Why don't more gas stations blow up? I think they're doing one heck of a job ensuring it doesn't happen all the time, whoever "they" may be. Perhaps aliens are incharge.

================================================

Why isn't the media making a big deal out of the firing a few days ago of that military hardhat dude in charge of Operation: Enduring Freedom for publicly saying Bush's plan to send 21,000 more troops to Iraq is a bad plan? The dude was IN CHARGE of the military operation. Big news? Apparently not. Perhaps aliens are incharge.

================================================

"Kind and giving, all the rest is treason."
 
Posts: 1010 | Location: Sacratomato, Cauliflower | Registered: 29 December 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
grasstains:
Automatic cut off valves are a requirement at all service station gas pumps. Sorry, no aliens. That's what prevents explosions and fires. You really have to do a number on a gas pump to cause a fire. However, I was at my local gas station last week and this woman is handing a check of some $400.00 to the clerk. I know the clerk, so I casually asked, "...what was all that about?" He said she paid him for the broken hose and hardware when she pulled away from the pump with the hose still in the gas-filler of her car. He said, "Oh, happens at least once a month!"

I'm trying to locate info on it, but how many people are actually murdered in America, in the US, everyday? Just in Chicago last year and the year before, there were 1,000 each year. That's more than 3 a day just for Chicago. I'm guessing right now, but I'd venture to say about 500, at least, people are murdered every day in the United States. That's an average of 10 for each state. Too much, or too little?
 
Posts: 3954 | Location: South Orange County, CA USA | Registered: 28 June 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
Well, we could pat ourselves on the back and say "Good job, Brownie" for keeping the murder rate at it's current level, but it's still way too high for me. According to your numbers, Nard, the U.S. is losing more people in Chicago than in Iraq. Wow...

Remember about twenty years ago when the cops had some black militant gang cornered in an old apartment building in a really rundown part of the city... and ended up burning down not only the entire building, but most of the block?

Why did that happen?

================================================

"Kind and giving, all the rest is treason."
 
Posts: 1010 | Location: Sacratomato, Cauliflower | Registered: 29 December 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
Why is a length of film or video images called "footage" instead of "photage"? And if it is less than a foot in length, why do we not use "inchage"?

================================================

"Kind and giving, all the rest is treason."
 
Posts: 1010 | Location: Sacratomato, Cauliflower | Registered: 29 December 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
Well, fires at the gas pump are easier so start than you might think. Urban legend has it that cell phones can spark one off, which is at least doubtful, but static can do it. Lotsa articles on this. Here's a video. Note that getting back into and out of the car is usually the cause and, for some reason, it's usually women who do this.
http://www.pei.org/static/static.mov

As to murders, a recent article by Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:
Population of Counties won by Gore: 127 million
Bush: 143 million
States won by Gore: 19
Bush: 29
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in Counties won by Gore: 13.2
Bush: 2.1
Professor Olson adds, in aggregate the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great Country. Gore’s territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare.”

Coincidence?
 
Posts: 3167 | Location: Box in Braling I's cellar | Registered: 02 July 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
Around 2002, thereabouts, Chicago hit a 1,000 murders, at least according to the news media. Now looking thru archival listings on the internet, the most murders I can find are around 650 a yr. for Chicago last 10 yrs. So, how do they figure? I recall Mayor Daley hitting the ceiling over the 1,000 murder count. I do remember reading how the numnber of murders came down the following year. (Should have saved the old newspapers.)
 
Posts: 3954 | Location: South Orange County, CA USA | Registered: 28 June 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
Regarding murders, violence, and mayhem in general, this is a terrible question, but I did have to ask "why?" regarding the two famous cases in New York, the fatal 1990 stabbing in the subway of Brian Watkins of Provo, Utah, and the case which occurred around the same time, at first only known as "The Central Park Jogger." This brave woman has since come forward and let her identity be known. I was absolutely shocked by these cases--oh, not by the violence, mind you--by all the fuss!

Why national news coverage and Time and Newsweek cover stories over a subway murder and a Central Park assault? I thought at least five or ten people were stabbed, shot, and/or beaten aboard New York subways every day, and of those, if only half died, it would still add up to at least around 1,000 a year. The same thing with Central Park. I thought at least a dozen rapes occurred there every day year round (well, maybe slightly fewer in winter), and if only half resulted in murders, this would still add up to 2,000 or more per year. The guy from Utah at least had the news value of being a tourist, but the woman who was raped and had her head kicked in was a New Yorker. This is news??? Maybe the real news is, there is not quite so much violent crime in New York as those of us in small towns had been led to believe.

By the way, my sisters and I had visited New York several times by the 1990s, so we weren't just untraveled hicks who'd only seen it by way of postcards. My sister went back recently and said the changes in people's attitudes for the better over the past few years is DRASTIC. Don't think we have to ask "why" on that last.
 
Posts: 7299 | Location: Dayton, Washington, USA | Registered: 03 December 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
This link will keep you busy for awhile:

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm

Unless I'm reading the charts wrong, the statistics, for instance, for the states of Alabama and Arizona, combined for January thru June of 2006, (6 months) is total murders:
477



 
Posts: 624 | Location: San Francisco | Registered: 27 October 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
Some years ago I read an article which demonstrated that the rate of humans-killing-humans was fairly constant over time, and that during the two world wars the murder rates declined (balancing out the deaths due to armed conflict, do you see?).

I'm afraid I don't have a reference for this, and I can't remember where I read it. It might possibly be in one of Stephen Jay Gould's essays, or possibly Carl Sagan or Isaac Asimov. (I read a lot of popular science books.)


- Phil

Deputy Moderator | Visit my Bradbury website: www.bradburymedia.co.uk | Visit the Center for RB Studies: www.tinyurl.com/RBCenter
 
Posts: 5029 | Location: UK | Registered: 07 April 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by philnic:
...balancing out the deaths due to armed conflict, do you see?


I like the way the British say 'do you see?'


"Live Forever!"
 
Posts: 6909 | Location: 11 South Saint James Street, Green Town, Illinois | Registered: 02 October 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
The U.S. has a high gun murder rate, whereas a country like England with strict gun controls has almost no gun murders and a very low murder rate. Doesn't this show that gun control is effective in reducing murder rates? Not exactly. Prior to having any gun controls, England already had a homicide rate much lower than the United States.

I know this argument runs contrary to the one I put forth on "Dangerous Movies", but you can't argue statistics.

Without wanting to offend our "red state, right-wing, gun-toting" friends here on the board (are there any?), I suggest that it is due to conditioning. Americans tend to love extremely violent movies, shooting things, and the like, but most have a real problem with sex or even nudity in movies. In Europe, it tends toward the opposite - they generally dislike violence, but have no problem with liberal attitudes toward sex or nudity, even featuring it on broadcast television! Is this not true, Mr Nichols?

Why, indeed.


"Live Forever!"
 
Posts: 6909 | Location: 11 South Saint James Street, Green Town, Illinois | Registered: 02 October 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
quote:
I know this argument runs contrary to the one I put forth on "Dangerous Movies", but you can't argue statistics.


You admit that as if it's a bad thing, contradicting yourself, when we both know it's just what us open-minded fuzzy-headed free-thinking lefties do. Don't ever change. No, keep changing, and questioning the changes.

================================================

"Kind and giving, all the rest is treason."
 
Posts: 1010 | Location: Sacratomato, Cauliflower | Registered: 29 December 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
DS, your impression of what Europeans generally like and dislike is that of most Americans.
 
Posts: 3167 | Location: Box in Braling I's cellar | Registered: 02 July 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
Yeah, they're a murderous lot. All the good ones came over here.

================================================


"Years from now we want to go into the pub and tell about the Terrible Conflagration up at the Place, do we not?"
 
Posts: 1010 | Location: Sacratomato, Cauliflower | Registered: 29 December 2003Reply With QuoteReport This Post
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by grasstains:
You admit that as if it's a bad thing, contradicting yourself, when we both know it's just what us open-minded fuzzy-headed free-thinking lefties do. Don't ever change. No, keep changing, and questioning the changes.


Good advice, Friend grass; you are as usual, correct.

"I voted for it before I voted against it."


"Live Forever!"
 
Posts: 6909 | Location: 11 South Saint James Street, Green Town, Illinois | Registered: 02 October 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8