I'm getting claustrophobic just looking at the rescue capsule.
You may not be cut out for a career in mining, mcmc.
Hopefully they've sent down some Valium or similar for the miners.
You may not be cut out for a career in mining an MRI, mcmc.
You said it. I'd just have to stay underground forever. Nursing my undiagnosed brain tumor.
Good to see the Minister for Health is overseeing final details. Inspires confidence.
I'm just so relieved that there are pony rides.
Huh. They're updating at a pretty good clip. Seven new photos since I first posted.
The Chilean flag is pretty cool, but it kind of looks like a preschoolers drawing of an American flag.
9: My honest-to-goodness trick for keeping the Texan and Chilean flags straight is to remember that the Texas one's blue part keeps going south, just like the US did when we crossed the Nueces River, one of the proximate causes of the Mexican-American War.
Typical foreigners. Tried to steal the Texas flag for their lame country but couldn't even get that right.
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Earlier today I had a big argument with arguably the two smartest people I know, together with a handful of other very smart people, who all think global warming should just be ignored, or that maybe the answer is to pump the atmosphere full of sulfate aerosols. The prevailing attitude wasn't denialism per se but something more like "eh, those climate scientists just aren't as smart as us and they exaggerate how bad things will be just to get attention". The one guy there who agreed that the best answer is to stop burning fossil fuels still thinks there's no point in advocating legislation, because he thinks China will never do anything. It was a fairly friendly discussion, but the more I think about it the more I'm getting pissed off after the fact.
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Gah. I've been horribly upset for those men as time has gone on -- of course -- and frankly haven't followed news of what kinds of long-term support they'll be provided in the aftermath. They'll have PTSD for life, probably. What kind of worker's comp program does Chile have? I cannot remotely imagine going back to work as a miner in that situation. Panic attack, panic attack!
Etc.
DUDE, WHAT'S UP WITH THAT GLOBAL WARMING NUTCASE GUY ON THE THIRD FLOOR? WE WERE JUST HAVING A FRIENDLY DISCUSSION, AM I RIGHT, BRO?
10: Is that often a problem?
IIRC, after I came back from studying in Chile, I kept thinking I was seeing Chilean flags (on cars, etc.), only to look it up and realize that I was usually seeing Texas flags. So I settled on a way to quickly tell the two apart.
Santiago is almost due south of what major American city? No peeking.
18: I was going to say Richmond, VA, which is pretty much the same.
Wait! It's a trick question; he didn't specify which Santiago.
Right coast, but further east--Boston.
I can't believe the first dude out had all those satanic messages carved into his face.
12 might be onto something. Now that I see how they're spelling the name of the rescue capsule, it's clearly a ripoff of these guys.
I'm tearing up over this. Chile obviously produces some shit hot engineers.
However, let it not be forgotten that in a couple of weeks, the guys coming up will learn if they have jobs and health care any more. As will all their colleagues. In a just world the owners of the Compania Minera San Esteban Primera would be shoved in that pod and sent down to the bottom and left there.
Some county in Texas has had the Chilean flag on its absentee ballot for the past five years.
The joke in the post title redeems the past three years of this blog's existence.
Some county in Texas
If it's south of San Antonio it's as near to being in Chile as makes no odds.
Maybe the more recent jokes have been over your head?
28: Yes, that's probably it.
He's a bigshot theologian now, so he thinks he's an expert on redemption.
Powerful commentary from the always-trenchant Larry King: "Miner's name unbelievably is Sepulveda! Like the street I was just on in LA! Amazing!"
30: Now all we need is a miner named Pico.
15 up. Miner's name unbelievably is Segovia! Like that guitar player who was around when I was a kid!
See, I can do that too. How the fuck is Larry King paid brazillions while I get by on $45k?
Rescue efforts like this one make me consider what I think of as the "baby in the well" problem (which has some overlap with the trolley and lifeboat problems).
There seems to be no hesitation for individuals and societies to go to extraordinary lengths to rescue individuals or small groups of people if it's at all possible, even when -- as is decidedly not the case here -- the disaster results from the rescuees' foolhardiness or arrogance. There's the teenager who was circumnavigating solo and was rescued by the Australian government when her boat was disabled or the many, many idiot hikers, campers, and skiiers who venture ill-prepared into places they probably couldn't handle even if they were prepared.
I can think of lots of real world reasons that we spend the resources to rescue them that we don't spend on others in need. In rescue situtations, the need is immediate, specific, and restricted to a few identifiable people. The definition of success is clear and you don't have to wait months or years to know if it's worked.
But what's the ethical thing to do given limited resources? Am I asking an obvious question that Rob's first-year students breeze right through? Or did I just Blow. Your. Mind.
I've wondered about that. I think a lot of it is that the uncertainty discount is huge: does spending more money on health clinics actually save any lives? If you're the sort of person who can be emotionally persuaded by statistical data, you think it does. But most people really don't believe that in the way they they believe that those 33 miners' lives were saved. So even if you could have saved more than 33 lives with the same money by spending it on something worthy like prenatal care, those statistical lives get heavily discounted for uncertainty.
Should we rescue Larry King if he falls down a mineshaft? Also, people in the UK know who he is?! WTF, America?
13: happened to me, too, back in gradschool. I've since come around to the "Chinese peasants gots to get they ipadselectricity and plumbing, son" school of thought.