Big Blue Huddle

Quote from: MightyGiants on July 08, 2021, 01:06:55 PM
They finally officially changed operations from rescue to recovery.   In my opinion, they should have made this switch a bit sooner.   I think they were giving the relatives of the victims false hope.  Plus, in rescue you might take risks that you simply wouldn't take with recovery

I agree and have thought this myself. Without water you're looking at maybe a three day window, and I bet it's less that that in the South Florida heat. I suspect it dragged on for as long as it did due to the immense pressure from above to be seen to be doing absolutely everything possible to rescue any possible survivors, including running the effort much longer than they otherwise might with less spotlight on them.

That's not a good reason of course, but I suspect it was the reason.

Maybe they tacitly conduted operations in a way that didn't put the responders at quite as much personal risk as they would be if it were a true all-out effort.

Quote from: uconnjack8 on July 06, 2021, 09:00:32 AM
I believe the measurement is from when vaccinations were deployed.

That's more interesting then. Needless to say I knew it was a high number. 99.5% is higher than I would have guessed though.

Quote from: uconnjack8 on July 06, 2021, 07:41:54 AM
Trying to find where I heard this, but I thought it was relevant to the conversation:

99.5% of Covid related deaths right now are in unvaccinated people.

That percentage is likely to decrease over time, since a huge number of the total deaths occurred when there were no vaccinations available and also before people were taking lots of precautions and before doctors/hospitals fully understood the disease.

No doubt though that if you're fully vaccinated your chances of dying from this are very low. They're not zero, but they're low enough that you should be able to feel a lot more comfortable in day to day life then prior to receiving the vaccine.

If someone is genuinely scared of the vaccine and believes, rightly or wrongly, that it is more dangerous to them than the disease itself, and does not place great significance on the argument that vaccinating oneself is better for the population at large and not just the individual, then I can understand why someone might make that decision. I don't personally agree with it, but I can see how someone could arrive at that.

What I don't think I understand though is why someone would choose not to get vaccinated purely because of "their position on civil liberty." Who has threatened their civil liberty? The government is not requiring people to get vaccinated, so why the need to protest and take some sort of statement at the expense of your and others' personal well being? Given the government is not forcing anyone to get the vaccine, why is not getting one akin to taking a stance on your civil liberty? Clearly it is anyone's right to do that and I am not suggesting it shouldn't be, but it does not make much sense to me. No one has forced them to do anything.

Lenn,

Thanks for the above reviews. I had been planning on watching "The Ice Road" but hadn't pulled the trigger yet. I think I won't now after reading your review, or at least not anytime soon. I typically like Neeson's movies, but every so often you run into a really stupid one. Sounds like this is one of those. Thanks again for the heads-up.

Quote from: Ed Vette on July 03, 2021, 12:46:41 PM
They're not breaking the law. Should there be a law mandate? Should Vaxxed have an ID Card and should there be serious restrictions without one? We may soon be facing issues concerning Liberty in this country and many others.

I think when you are talking about the health and safety of others, and not just the individual in question, then it becomes difficult (at best) to put all of these issues under the umbrella of personal liberty. Should smoking cigarettes in crowded public locations be more permitted? Was life better when people had the liberty to smoke in places like airplanes and in doctors' waiting rooms?

I certainly don't think anyone should be forced to have the vaccine. However I do think it is also wrong to knowingly allow the rest of the society to be put at any more additional risk than they need to be based solely on the decisions of others to not vaccinate, despite overwhelmingly strong and uniform advice from doctors and other infectious disease experts.

While I am not going to judge people for deciding to do (or in this case not do) something that is perfectly legal and clearly their right, I am all for imposing heavier restrictions and more red tape etc for those who are not vaxed. This is the right thing to do anyway from a safety perspective, but hopfully it also has the effect of persuading some folks who are on the fence to go ahead and get it done.

It's incredible to me that the prosecutor felt they didn't have enough to convict given the number of women who came forward. Rape is obviously a tricky crime to prove in many cases given there is often no physical evidence and given people don't always come forward right away, but I would have thought that when you have that many women all pointing the finger, it becomes more and more compelling to a jury. When it's just one or even two women it's he-said-she-said, but when you have as many as Cosby did that seems like a totally different situation.

How did Cosby's case differ from Harvey Weinstein's from an evidentiary perspective? I guess in Weinstein's case they had a couple of tapes?

That Cosby ever got this non proecution agreement in the first place is pretty outrageous, but once that was done, yesterday's decision became pretty academic unfortunately. People have every right to be upset, but the blame does not like with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. They did their job. You can't just pretend the 5th amendment doesn't exist.

Quote from: MightyGiants on June 29, 2021, 02:29:44 PM
This is one of the better articles I have read


https://www.kake.com/story/44198811/as-engineers-hunt-for-answers-in-the-surfside-building-collapse-signs-point-to-the-buildings-lower-reaches

Very good article indeed. It seems pretty clear now that the primary (or at least one of the main) source of the collapse was at the base. This article definitely provides a lot more depth around the various theories.

I found this article. Amusing, interesting, and disgusting to read, all at the same time. For full disclousre, among these foods, I have tried:

1. Durian (as discussed). That was gross. I have nothing positive to say about it and would not recommend that to anyone who does not already have an acquired taste for it.

2. Kopi Luwak. I knew what it was but had never seen it before until I was at a hotel in Turks and Caicos (of all places). It was stupidly expensive (think around $20 or even $25 for a cup or a small pot), but I was very intrigued so I decided to just go for it. It just tasted like good quality coffee, but certainly not worth the price. Was a bit of a non-event. I know that it is considered to be very high quality, hence people's tolerance of the way it is procured.

3. Natto. Fermented beans. I had that once in Tokyo on a business trip. We were at a nice restaurant, and my hosts handled all the ordering, and that was among the items they selected. I didn't want to be rude, so I tried it. Defintely not my thing. Gross taste and texture. I love Japanese food, but that particular part of their cuisine is not for me and never will be.

I haven't tried any of these other foods and don't plan to. I have seen a documentary on casu marzu which included Gordon Ramsay trying it. Bugs gross me out, and so does rotting food, so no thanks. Perhaps the grossest thing on this list though is the mice wine, especially given people actually eat the rotted mice when they're done with the "wine." That is absolutely horrifying. I would eat anything else on this list before I tried that.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2018/10/10-of-the-worlds-most-disgusting-foods/

Quote from: Jolly Blue Giant on June 27, 2021, 08:13:31 AM
In my opinion, the ONLY reason Escargot gets eaten is because of the fancy French name as well as the product is served in ornamental shells that look nothing like the common yard snails' shell. I thoroughly believe that if the menu said, "Snails.......$15.95" and they were served in their original shell, the majority of people would never eat them. However, I do respect the fact that people eat (and enjoy) things I'd never eat. Try as I may, I don't think I could eat frogs' legs, but I know a lot of people love them. Dittos with sheep's head, rocky mountain oysters, etc. I get a kick out of a local tradition in Syracuse held every October called the "Riley's Testicle Festival" where testicles are served en masse (deep fried). Interestingly, a lot of women have zero problem eating testicles, but there's very few men that want to eat them...LOL

https://www.syracuse.com/restaurants/2015/10/rileys_balls_testicle_festival.html

FWIW, I genuinely enjoy escargots. I wouldn't eat them everyday or even once a month, but once in a while (once or twice a year maybe), as part of a French bistrot type meal, I do enjoy them as an appetizer. I honestly don't think it's just because they have a fancy-sounding name. I know I'm eating snails when I eat them.

If anything I would argue that a raw oyster is conceptually a trickier thing to get over for a first time eater than a cooked escargot. In any case, I very much enjoy both. Escargots have never made me sick though. Oysters have.

I don't think I have ever tried rocky mountain oysters, and I have no plans to. If I saw them on a menu I wouldn't order them. If I'm going to order a bunch of unhealthy deep fried food, I'll stick to the classics that I know I love like calamari, chicken tenders, onion rings, etc. No need to fix what isn't broken there.

A lot of foods that we eat regularly would give anyone second thoughts if they really pondered not only what they were eating, but also the whole process of getting the food from its original form to their plate. I'm not going to get into lots of detail here, but there are plenty of "normal" foods that we wouldn't think twice about eating that have processes that would make most people squeamish if they really looked at them closely.

Quote from: LennG on June 26, 2021, 08:35:00 PM
Hey Dave, if you can eat that slimy creature called a snail, and love it, what's a little grasshopper then, plus it was chocolate coated.   

Lenn,

Very fair point, and I don't disagree in principle. It's just a line I haven't been able to cross.

And to be honest, insects as food don't seem to come up as often as escargots, which I see on menus at least one or two times a year.

Quote from: LennG on June 26, 2021, 01:44:33 PM
In my 'younger' days while I was serving in Germany, I had the 'pleasure???' of eating chocolate-covered grasshoppers. A bit crunchy but if I didn't know what they were, I might have enjoyed them a bit more.

As I said in a thread a while back on foods you hate, I HAVE eaten some green beans once and I thought I would puke. I HATE green beans. 

You just made me think of something. When were vacationing in Bali several years ago, we were eating at an outdoor restaurant and the food was very good. I had some sort of meat dish that was on the spicy side, and there was something on my plate that looked like a simple green bean. So I ate it, thinking that's what I was eating. I bit into it and it tasted fine... more or less like a green bean. About 4-5 seconds later I was blasted with an absolutely unbearable, crazy wave of heat that had me sweating, completely flushed, and visible writhing in pain. I have never eaten anything like that. The waiters (who were obiously locals) were trying to control their giggling but they clearly thought the situation was hysterical. It was so powerful that I could still feel it the next morning, and that was a lunch. That was definitely my most regrettable food experience ever, even though it was a pretty good restaurant.

Moving back to insects, I admit that I'm a little curious, but the concept just disgusts me so much. I mean why would anyone want to bite into a grasshopper? I get that in a poorer country if that is your only affordable protein source, then obviously that makes sense, but why would anyone with alternatives want to do that other than as a one-off, fear factor type experiment purely for shock value? The thought alone disgusts me.

I love escargot and find myself ordering it frequently when I see it on a menu. I also love good sea urchin. I have tried a number of weird things in my life. I have had haggis, tripe, frogs legs, and other somewhat weird foods. None really bothered me, and some I actually liked. One that I regretted though was durian. I tried that several years ago when I was in Singapore. For those who don't know, durian is a fruit found in that part of the world. It looks like a spikey cantaloupe. When opened, the fruit has a yellowish color and a custard-like consistency. It sounds inocuous enough, but man is it vile. It is one of the most foul-smelling foods I have ever come across. Some say it smells like gross feet. I would liken it more to badly rotting onions. It doesn't taste good either, although it's the smell that is really the worst. And yet it is considered a delicacy by many in Asia. Different strokes for different folks obiously. I'm sure they find certain western foods disgusting, such as cheese.

One thing I have not tried yet is insects. I think I probably draw the line there. I have friends that have tried Mexican style grasshoppers before. They are found in Oaxaca Mexico and are called chapulines. They're cleaned, cooked, and seasoned. I'm told it's basically like eating a chip or a sunflower seed, and that it's no big deal. I am just not sure I could do it. With that said, 50-100 years from now insects as cuisine could become much more commonplace, if not sooner than that.