On getting a sense of priorities

[andrewducker]

In the last ten years, smoking has killed 4,000,000 Americans. Traffic has killed 400,000. Terrorism has killed 4,000.

(Can't remember where I stole this from)

Comments

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

Ah but the difference is surely that dying form smoking is a consequence of a long-term lifestyle choice, dying in an RTA is purely accidental, but death from a brainwashed fuckwit flying a plane into a building is entirely premeditated and designed to cause 'terror' and knock out a key financial nerve centre.

The orchestrators of those attacks knew exactly how the Bush administration would react to them; they got the Jihad they wanted. Or perhaps not; the refusal to execute Moussai (sp?) will at least ensure he remains more of a moron than a martyr.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

We need to find something that's killed 40,000.

[andrewducker]

Microsoft Windows?

Hot Dogs?

I wonder what the alcohol statistics are.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Alcohol kills fewer people yearly in America than smoking does, or so Thank You For Smoking tells me. Thank You For Smoking also tells me that cheddar cheese is the real killer these days.

[ninox.livejournal.com]

According to World Health Organisation Malaria kills about 40,000

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I find this sort of "perspective" a little troubling, because I think of them as individual lives, not statistics, and 4,000 is a hell of a lot of individual lives. Plus, as mentioned above, smoking is a personal choice undertaken by individuals who have access to information on its dangers, and therefore the harm it causes is to some extent self-inflicted. Now, I understand that that's an oversimplification where addiction is involved. Nevertheless, there is *some* element of personal choice there. When people die from terrorism, it's murder, and a particularly cold-bloodedly premeditated form of murder at that.

At base, human lives are human lives, and I have difficulty taking a statistical perspective on their loss, you know?

[andrewducker]

However, when the government is choosing things to work on it should choose at least partially due to the number of people it can effect. And while 4000 lives is clearly a lot of dead people to feel sorry for, there are _vastly_ more dying all the time of various things that the government could help with, but doesn't, due to having spent it all on wars that they justified with those 4000...

[dougs.livejournal.com]

Maybe our 40,000 is passive smoking?

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Well, ITA that the government has flushed down the toilet a ton of money on bogus "we will save you from teh terroristz" wars, but then, I wouldn't mind nearly so much if said wars did a thing to protect us from teh terroristz.

I guess I feel like the government already does roughly as much as it can do regarding smoking deaths and auto accident deaths. I mean, the warning labels are there, cigarettes are taxed to hell and back. The research money is there for cancer. I haven't found the laws or the responses to broken laws (DUIs, etc.) to be inadequate. I think that the rub here is that smoking and auto accidents are due to a.) people's own personal choices, b.) people's own carelessness, and c.) sheer dumb luck. (Un-luck?) Terrorism *would* be a good deal more preventable by government, if the government had a fucking clue how to go about it. Clearly, though, they don't.

[drplokta]

The government doesn't do nearly as much as it could about smoking. Think about a ten-year-long expensive PR campaign to make smoking seem like something that only dorks and losers do, which is perfectly possible given the political will.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm just missing whether it's the government's role *to* do that. Terrorist attacks on America's soil are the government's business, no brainer. I guess I don't really get why it would be their role to run that sort of ten-year anti-smoking campaign. Like I said, smoking's a personal choice, and frankly I think I'd be offended on behalf of the people I know who do smoke if the government started hammering it into us that smokers = dorks and losers.

I don't know. I guess I have a narrower view of what the government ought to be doing with taxpayer dollars than some. To my mind, that sort of PR campaign would be better suited to a private organization.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Come to NZ...

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3663549a7144,00.html

I'm not sure about the 4,000

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

because, depending on how you look at the causes, you have to include all the American servicemen dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And the death of one person is bad.

But everyone dies.

That means God is bad.

So we should ban God.

I could get even more un-PC, but I've had people ranting at me before when I mentioned it, so I won't go through that again uninvited.

So I'll just say 8,000 people a day die of AIDS worldwide.

Re: I'm not sure about the 4,000

[andrewducker]

And something like 10,000 children a day die of starvation and malnutrition-based diseases.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The objective of the US war on terror (and Blair's follow-on tap dance) is nothing to do with abolishing terrorism, and everything to do with power politics.

If you haven't ever read Orwell's 1984, now would be a good time to start. (NB: I mean, read the book. Don't bother with the films.)

NB: On Microsoft Windows ...

Let us postulate there are 100M Windows desktops in the American workplace. Let us postulate that through crashing, virus infections, having ancient filesystems that need defragmenting, etcetera, each desktop costs one work-hour of maintenance per month. (I've heard support ratios of 40-60 Windows desktops per support worker so this may be an underestimate.) In one month, Windows malfunctions or design flaws therefore cost the US economy 100M working hours. Or 1250 working lifetimes (40 hours/week, 50 weeks/year, 40 years/lifetime).

Ergo: every year, running Windows costs the USA four times as many lifetimes as were taken on 9/11 by a bunch of bampots with box-cutters.

[andrewducker]

40-60 seems like a reasonable number for Windows 98. Windows 2000/XP requires less admins provided it's on decent hardware.

But yeah, the maths is good.

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

Don't worry. With the increasing popularity of SUVs, and Bush's foreign policy, the numbers will soon be much more even!

[lproven.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a start. See, I'd like to see a Jack Womack-style campaign of intensive worldwide advertising, promoting how smoking makes you look cool, sexy and sophisticated and enhances your appeal to the opposite sex. How it makes kids look older, adults look younger and everyone look more like a 1930s movie star.

Couple this with intensive taxation and exemption from free medical treatment for smoking-related diseases.

Bosh, self-administered population growth control! And not only that, smarter people are less likely to be suckered by it! More dumb people die!

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I couldn't resist the comparison...

http://www.google.com/trends?q=terrorism%2Cbritney

I expect the lines to meet about 2020...