Here’s a new version of the trolley problem, so there are two tracks right next to one another and there are 10 people straddling both tracks and then there are another 10 people on the right track only. What specifically is wrong with the people who chose the left track in this regard?
Khantron, the alien that only lovessays
Sorry my trolley problem wasn’t quite right with the numbers. It should be at least 30 people on the right track.
There have been 2,243 drone strikes in the first two years of the Trump presidency, compared with 1,878 in Mr Obama’s eight years in office, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a UK-based think tank.
BBC News, 7Mar19, “Trump revokes Obama rule on reporting drone strike deaths,” accessed 4May19
unclefrogysays
@1
“four dead in ohio”
mnb0
I dropped out back in the day because it all sucked but I kept watching and I learned that without participating, the change is little and I could not expect that “someone else” would fix it.
I realized how democracy works, there are no perfect choices we are all just fallible imperfect people groping toward the future. I could not retire to some hermitage and wait for “the masia” to come and bring us back to the garden of eden of peace , truth and justice . Existence is as it is
On all remembrance days I pause to think of all those who died the good the bad and the innocent those who killed and those who were killed. we all die. The past is done, we have the future ahead of us but we have the problems of today to take care of always.
uncle frogy
William Brinkman #9
This time would be different.
Drones, I think.
Crudely Wrottsays
My local NPR station aired Niel Young’s song this evening. I had to think for a moment and look at the calendar. Then it hit me. May the 4th, 1970. I was in college that day. A long distance from Kent State. I clearly remember the early news reports which were at first confusing. It became clear over the next couple of days that something horrible and shameful had happened.
So, today, I cried a little.
Not only for the dead and wounded students but also for the young guardsmen who panicked into firing. This must be a terrible day for them as well as for the parents and relatives who lost loved ones. The depths of their regret cannot be underestimated.
Yeah. Today I cried some.
And I wonder, how soon will I need to cry again?
rustiguzzisays
I clicked on “Kent State” above and got a screen headed “www.ohio.com” and the message “Access Denied”, adding “Error code 16” and “This request blocked by the security rules”. At the foot, the words “Powered by imperva”.
Wossis? FWIW, I’m in the south-east of England.
unit000says
rustiguzzi @12 – similar location, similar result. At a guess, it’s a GDPR thing – they’re not compliant with EU data protection rules, so they block all EU traffic
rustiguzzisays
Thanks, unit000 – a good answer, just as I was about to get paranoid …
Fortunately, thanks to Wikipedia, I have now had my memory jogged as to what that was all about.
leerudolphsays
but also for the young guardsmen who panicked into firing.
Or perhaps not. A poster elseblog referred to Peter Davies, The Truth About Kent State, whereupon I found a contemporary review of the book in the New York Times of September 2, 1973. I had forgotten that Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell had refused (even after a scathing preliminary report on the shootings) to convene a grand jury; I don’t remember if I even ever knew that Mitchell’s replacement, Elliot Richardson, had (as of August 1973) “agreed to reopen the case in an attempt to answer the old questions”; and I certainly don’t know (because, as of today, my following up of these leads has gone no further) how far that reopened case might have proceeded before Richardson was fired by Nixon.
But here’s a relevant passage from that book review:
This was not a case of tragic confrontation, in which violent protest brought violence in return, as President Nixon suggested at the time, but of something much simpler. Thirteen students were shot at Kent State because popular feeling, officially encouraged, held that students were fair game. The Justice Department ignored the results of its own investigation because the President, the Vice President and the Attorney General had all publicly attacked student activists as ideological hoodlums. When the facts at Kent State failed to fit official preconceptions, the fa[ct]s were slighted or suppressed, and the case was ignored.
Further material from the book (cited in the review) involves evidence (of weight that was perhaps never determined, or the determination of which was never made public) that the “young guardsmen” were not “panicked into firing”, but fired deliberately and concertedly, with malice aforethought.
If they did, fuck them. In any case, fuck the majority of the citizens of Ohio, my native state, who (according to polling the following week) thought “they deserved it” (the shot students, not the shooting Guardsmen).
rietpluimsays
students were fair game … the President, the Vice President and the Attorney General had all publicly attacked student activists as ideological hoodlums
Now where are we seeing that same strategy again…?
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
Right-wingers still pop a boner over this.
Thank you. You’ve just taken all the fun out of Star Wars day.
Sorry, I’ve something else to remember.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_the_Dead
I’ll remember the victims of the drones send by the president you voted for twice as well.
They say it’s very pretty in Ohio this time of year. As it was, the day we found out for sure that America hated and feared its children so much it wanted them to kill each other.
mnb0
Here’s a new version of the trolley problem, so there are two tracks right next to one another and there are 10 people straddling both tracks and then there are another 10 people on the right track only. What specifically is wrong with the people who chose the left track in this regard?
Sorry my trolley problem wasn’t quite right with the numbers. It should be at least 30 people on the right track.
BBC News, 7Mar19, “Trump revokes Obama rule on reporting drone strike deaths,” accessed 4May19
@1
“four dead in ohio”
mnb0
I dropped out back in the day because it all sucked but I kept watching and I learned that without participating, the change is little and I could not expect that “someone else” would fix it.
I realized how democracy works, there are no perfect choices we are all just fallible imperfect people groping toward the future. I could not retire to some hermitage and wait for “the masia” to come and bring us back to the garden of eden of peace , truth and justice . Existence is as it is
On all remembrance days I pause to think of all those who died the good the bad and the innocent those who killed and those who were killed. we all die. The past is done, we have the future ahead of us but we have the problems of today to take care of always.
uncle frogy
The scary part is that it could happen again.
William Brinkman #9
This time would be different.
Drones, I think.
My local NPR station aired Niel Young’s song this evening. I had to think for a moment and look at the calendar. Then it hit me. May the 4th, 1970. I was in college that day. A long distance from Kent State. I clearly remember the early news reports which were at first confusing. It became clear over the next couple of days that something horrible and shameful had happened.
So, today, I cried a little.
Not only for the dead and wounded students but also for the young guardsmen who panicked into firing. This must be a terrible day for them as well as for the parents and relatives who lost loved ones. The depths of their regret cannot be underestimated.
Yeah. Today I cried some.
And I wonder, how soon will I need to cry again?
I clicked on “Kent State” above and got a screen headed “www.ohio.com” and the message “Access Denied”, adding “Error code 16” and “This request blocked by the security rules”. At the foot, the words “Powered by imperva”.
Wossis? FWIW, I’m in the south-east of England.
rustiguzzi @12 – similar location, similar result. At a guess, it’s a GDPR thing – they’re not compliant with EU data protection rules, so they block all EU traffic
Thanks, unit000 – a good answer, just as I was about to get paranoid …
Fortunately, thanks to Wikipedia, I have now had my memory jogged as to what that was all about.
Or perhaps not. A poster elseblog referred to Peter Davies, The Truth About Kent State, whereupon I found a contemporary review of the book in the New York Times of September 2, 1973. I had forgotten that Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell had refused (even after a scathing preliminary report on the shootings) to convene a grand jury; I don’t remember if I even ever knew that Mitchell’s replacement, Elliot Richardson, had (as of August 1973) “agreed to reopen the case in an attempt to answer the old questions”; and I certainly don’t know (because, as of today, my following up of these leads has gone no further) how far that reopened case might have proceeded before Richardson was fired by Nixon.
But here’s a relevant passage from that book review:
Further material from the book (cited in the review) involves evidence (of weight that was perhaps never determined, or the determination of which was never made public) that the “young guardsmen” were not “panicked into firing”, but fired deliberately and concertedly, with malice aforethought.
If they did, fuck them. In any case, fuck the majority of the citizens of Ohio, my native state, who (according to polling the following week) thought “they deserved it” (the shot students, not the shooting Guardsmen).
Now where are we seeing that same strategy again…?