I think it's as justified as any public park in grounds of providing something people enjoy. Plus the whole protection against drowning thing.

I'm still worried that I can't get my son to learn to swim well. He can probably meet the drowning-protection standard, but just barely.

You should move up here: lotsa lakes, hardly any snakes.

But seriously, even here where we have a plethora of swimming options, it seems like more kids of color drown than would be expected from their proportion of the population. We finally got a new public pool at one of the neighborhood parks, precisely to increase water safety for kids of color. I don't remember seeing any of the type of statistics you allude to, however.

I would say yes, it's an important public good (although I don't know how effective public pools are in creating safe swimmers). NYC, there's a racial divide in how likely people are to learn to swim, and every couple of years some teenagers drown at a beach in the area.

2: have you tried hurling him as far as you can into a lake? That always encouraged us to swim when I was a kid.

Swimming is like riding a bicycle in that you never forget, but better because it doesn't crunch your balls into uselessness.

5: That really didn't help.

You should move up here: lotsa lakes, hardly any snakes.

I mean, part of the problem is that we do have a wonderful river for swimming in, which has lots of calm shallow parts and then unexpectedly deep, swift parts.

Although it sounds like drowning deaths are mostly small children and drunk teenagers and adults on rivers and lakes. Is learning to swim protection against this kind of drunken deaths? Or is it people being too drunk to swim?

7: Sorry, I forgot to mention that you should wait until summer to try this.

You should obviously have drunken swimming lessons for teens.

Is the sheer number of drowning deaths low enough that the entire thing is not a problem, even though it's horrifying that it's so racially unbalanced? Are we basically, as a society, good at keeping people who don't know how to swim from drowning?

9: My sense of the NYC stories is that it's teenagers who get incautious (I'm not sure about always drunk, but maybe) about remembering they can't swim. Like, the archetypical story is five teens at the beach, and one drowns, and the others say that he was a non-swimmer who got in over his head.

One time, when I was a drunk teen, a bunch of us were swimming across a river and a woman with us started to panic because she couldn't swim. We figured she could swim. She figured the river was shallow enough that everyone ahead of her was walking on the bottom.

I think you're right, it's not a huge public safety issue. But it is a meaningful public amenity issue -- in a hot climate, people who can swim and have a place to do it are going to enjoy life a lot more.

Are splash pads a suitable substitute? In my experience, they're great for toddlers, but over age 3-4, they're not quite as fun for kids as a pool. It's more like a jungle gym - fun to try out each of the features, and then unless a kid is playing with other kids, the novelty wears off. Whereas it seems like they can spend hours in a pool and never want to get out.

There's no cliche about splash pads being the best form of exercise.

A couple of thoughts. One, it would be natural for American Indians/Alaska Natives to have a higher drowning rate because of their greater rural population -- people tend to drown in the country, because they go swimming in rivers, old rock quarries, etc. I almost drowned in such a situation when I was young myself.

Also, I grew up in Lawrence in the 1970s, and it had public outdoor pools. Maybe they reopened?

Off to swim drink.

Also, I grew up in Lawrence in the 1970s, and it had public outdoor pools. Maybe they reopened?

No kidding! My mom grew up there, and my grandparents lived there until I graduated high school.

(I assume the closed pools was a relatively short-lived mid-50s thing.)

Yes, you need pools, and not just for the poor brown kids. As the population ages, swimming is a good way to move that old people can do. And in the hotter climate, yes, you need pools.

I don't know how it came about, but the very nicest, newest pool in Sacramento is in one of the poorest parts of town. Walk-in entry, a jungle gym with turnable valves in the pool, curly slide, diving board. It is awesome. It is also packed solid all summer long, mostly black families from the immediate neighborhood. It is extremely used, has fantastic utility for the city. We could use another ten of them.

While you are putting in a whole bunch of pools, it is probably worth making most of them good for playing and keeping at least one for lap swimmers. Better to keep those functions separate than to have to listen to the eternal fight over what temperature the water should be. (Lap swimmers like a couple degrees colder than rec swimmers.)

Yes. Pools are still a huge civil rights issue and there should be many more.

You guys control the temperature of your pools?

By turning off or on the sign about not peeing in the pool.

Oh, the "jungle gym with turnable valves in the pool," Megan mentioned.

You should go all in and include cooling coils so that in the winter it becomes a skating rink. Racial disparities are probably even larger for skating ability.

And the risk of suffocation is much greater if you're under 8 feet of ice.

I don't like skating. It turns out ice is really hard.

27: Hard and slippery! A painful combination.

My office is having an after work happy hour at a skating rink on Thursday. This seems as if it can only lead to sorrow.

Bring three or four milk crates, depending on how tall you are. People will admire your ability to plan ahead.

Here there are pools at the high schools that are open to the public evenings and weekends (managed by the city's parks & rec department). There are also municipal beaches with lifeguards at a couple of the lakes.

it would be natural for American Indians/Alaska Natives to have a higher drowning rate because of their greater rural population

For Alaska Natives specifically this is probably driven in part by a disproportionate amount of fishing, both subsistence and commercial.

As always I'm startled to realize how regional this is. I didn't know about any public pools in suburban NoVa when I was there, just private and health-club ones (And schools definitely did not have pools, which seems to startle people from NY, particularly. Maybe NY was all-in for swimming at one point.)

Maybe NY was all-in for swimming at one point.

Probably when all the fancy colleges made it an admissions requirement to keep out the Jews.

Christians and their webbed feet.

Jesus is literally a fish.

Literally in the metaphorical sense.

God needs literalism like a fish needs a station wagon.

Teach God a literal fish and he's God for a day. Teach God a metaphorical fish and he's God forever.

33: Didn't the south get rid of most of their public pools instead of allowing them to integrate? E.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/us/18pool.html

That sure sounds in character.

The linked diving board thread was really depressing. I had a nearby community pool when I was growing up. There was a kiddie pool, a pool that was more or less Olympic size, and a diving pool. There were swimming and diving lessons, and even a water safety instructor program. Growing up and graduating from the kiddie pool to the low board in the main pool and then to high board in the diving pool was a rite of passage all the kids went through.

Where I live, it seems like all the developments consisting of townhouses have swimming pools included, and all the people living in houses do not have access to a swimming pool and have to pay for one somewhere. Progressive!

Didn't the south get rid of most of their public pools instead of allowing them to integrate?

Throw the bathwater out with the poolwater.

@29: Happy hour and ice skating? That is a terrible idea. I've been skating since I was 3 years old, and I'm still on the ice 3-4 times a week. If I had a few drinks and then skated it would be sure to end in tears. And a concussion.

29, 45: Might be time to catch up on the case law on workers compensation and injuries suffered during work-sponsored recreational activities.

33 Obviously a completely different part of the country, but we had a nice Montgomery County MD pool not far from us. I see they have 7 of them.

(For those of you far from there, yes Maryland and Virginia are completely different. Spurning the Northern Scum notwithstanding.)

I always hated diving off the high board. Jumping off of high things makes me think I'm going to die.

Lots of other commenters have said it, so I'll just upvote: "Yes indeedy all kids should learn how to swim 50m without difficulty". At Rice in 1983 (and presumably before and after) there was a swim-test, that tested that very thing. Fail it, and you gotta take swim classes for P.E.

The story at Harvard was that a swim test was required because a major donor's son died on the Titanic which is the most stupidly Harvard thing ever but does bring back my point about the benefits of a combination pool/skating rink. Apparently it's a myth though.

Obviously a completely different part of the country, but we had a nice Montgomery County MD pool not far from us. I see they have 7 of them.

Those must be new? I don't recall them from the 1980s.

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Public service announcement (without guitars): Chrome has been hanging on shut down, requiring a force quit every time, for the past three weeks. I just looked at my extensions and saw that the old unfogged linked comments extension appeared to be corrupted. (RIP pdf23ds). I removed it and now the problem has gone away. (I also turned all my extensions off and turned them back on, FWIW.)

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There was an Unfogged Chrome extension? What did it do?

Aimhmhb At my prep school [ English usage: 8-13]we had a swimming test that was compulsory before you were allowed to play on the bank of the river at the bottom of the playing fields. This was an important privilege because the shooting range was down there. I reckon I could still pick off an approaching German soldier with a .22 rifle if he moved slowly enough and didn't shoot back.

The test involved swimming diagonally across the river and then straight back but the realistic aspect was that you had to do it fully clothed. Much more difficult, and useful.

Last time I went back the was a proper swimming pool where the shooting range used to be. This is the sort of decadence that leads people to call for a no deal Brexit.

To be fair, in my experience it is a hell of a lot easier to take a competent swimmer and teach him to shoot than it is to take a competent rifleman and teach him to swim.

56: Shouldn't the Summer Olympics have an event that combines swimming and shooting?

Pole vaulting and shooting is an exhibition sport for the next Olympics.

Shouldn't the Summer Olympics have an event that combines swimming and shooting?

It does. Modern pentathlon, the sport literally designed to simulate the skills required of a cavalry officer cut off behind enemy lines.

Dressing like a local peasant and stealing food?

I may be overly practical.

That would be the common soldiers. An officer is required to shoot the peasant and steal his horse.

I may be overly common.

It should really be renamed "19th century pentathlon" by now, given advances in military mobility. Or it should include a rally-driving stage instead of the horse-riding.

Or a law exam.

Or resurrect the challenge reportedly (by Alistair Horne) given to new officers of the French cavalry: here are a thirty-mile cross-country route, three bottles of champagne, three prostitutes and three horses. You may complete the stages in any order. You have three hours. Go.

If you leave the prostitutes alone with the champagne, they'll drink it, and if you leave the horses alone with the prostitutes the horses will kick them.

64: Drone piloting.

Ha, like they let cavalry officers anywhere near something that expensive and breakable.

The trouble is, if you looked for the most representative combat challenges modern infantry undergo, they'd probably not be athletic. Field repairing a vehicle, maybe? Wheedling a base sergeant into dispensing enough supplies?

68, 70: Only a matter of time until video games are Olympics sports, right?

The way to pass or at least fail most gracefully the French cavalry exam is to ask yourself what you want to be caught doing when the time runs out.

So: start with the prostitutes, then one bottle of champagne and get on the horse with the remaining bottles. The ride will ensure that most of them Froths out when opened, so you'll still be galloping, fairly sober, by the end.

An officer is required to shoot the peasant and steal his horse.

I suppose if the peasant can afford a horse, he's probably an officer in the enemy army, so fair dos.

70: infantry is still a pretty athletic occupation. They're bringing in new fitness tests for the army that include things like "casualty drag" - dragging a 110kg weight, simulating a soldier in full kit, over a certain distance in a certain time - and "deadlift" - lifting a 70kg weight from floor level, to simulate getting a wounded crewman out of the hatch of an armoured vehicle while you're standing on the roof. Afghanistan and Iraq involved a lot of patrolling on foot, carrying pretty heavy weight - armour, radio, weapons, ammunition etc, up to 100lb or more per man - so the training is moving away from long runs and cardio stuff, and towards explosive-strength training.

I think the biggest difference between "modern" pentathlon and modern pentathlon would be having to do the events in armour. Swim, run, steeplechase, shoot, and some sort of hand-to-hand event, all wearing 10kg of armour.

My high school had a swimming pool, although it was quite small. 10 metres, maybe? 15? We had periodic swimming classes for P.E., and at some point I recall being asked to do 20 lengths of that pool, and then retrieve a rubber brick from the bottom of the pool while clothed. I'm an indifferent swimmer, but I passed that, and I think everyone apart from a few people.*

My son has been taking swimming lessons for a while, and it's interesting to see how good the kids are that go to his swimming lessons. He's 5, and can swim OK, and dive underwater to retrieve stuff. I think I was 6 or 7 before I could swim, but whereas I could swim an OK breaststroke and splash about a bit, xelA is already working on proper breathing while doing the crawl/freestyle, and starting to learn to dive properly, and I've seen some of the 6 and 7 year olds that go to the same lessons doing butterfly. This, of course, is what money can buy you.

* the genuinely physically incompetent.**
** I was speccy, small, and rubbish at football, and indeed all ball sports, but I was a pretty fast 800m+ and/or cross country runner, and agile, so I didn't fall into that group.

I am still surprised, though I suppose I shouldn't be, when I come across a physically fit British adult who can't swim at all. (Defined as - jump in, swim 50m, tread water for 2 minutes, get out of the pool without using the steps). But they're about 2 in every 20 IME.

re: 75

Speaking of armour, I was surprised (and I don't know why, because I shouldn't have been) at some TV show myth-busting the idea that knights had to be craned onto their horses, and were helpless if they fell off. They had guys in full plate running army assault courses, doing forward rolls, press-ups, parkour style stuff, etc. And these were modern reasonably athletic people, not people who'd been brought up since childhood to fight in armour. Similarly, one of those meet the ancestors type shows had a reconstruction of a knight from Stirling Castle, from the early 14th century. The takeaway, that he was built like a serious rugby league player. 90kg of solid muscle.

I bet he had bad joint issues by forty.

re: 79

iirc, that was something they had identified. Bone degeneration in his neck, and one of his shoulders (bow and helmet, I think).

Knee replacement wasn't a thing then, so I hope they did most stuff on horse back.

Or fuck em because of all the beating up peasants they probably did.

some TV show myth-busting the idea that knights had to be craned onto their horses, and were helpless if they fell off.

An idea made up out of whole cloth by the strange and unpleasant Mark Twain for the strange and unpleasant Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court and later picked up by TH White in The Once and Future King, who frankly should have known better, and Laurence Olivier in Henry V, who did know better because the Master of the Royal Armouries was an advisor on the damn film and told him so.

There are some shreds of truth; a knight who fell off his horse was at a real disadvantage, but mostly because he had, while wearing some 20-30kg of steel strapped to his body, just fallen off a horse, and would be winded or stunned at least, if not more seriously injured.
Fighting in mud was also a problem because if you fall over while wearing plate there's a suction effect that makes getting up much harder.
And, most of all, what would have hindered them is overheating. You wore plate over a thick padded garment called a gambeson, to make it more comfortable and absorb the force of an impact, and a similarly padded coif on your head. That's a lot of insulation, especially if you have a close-helm or your visor is down; not much way to dump heat. So as soon as you start to exert yourself, even on a cool day, you'll start heating up, and if you keep at it you'll get heatstroke. There are plenty of accounts of armoured men dying of heatstroke. The Knights of Malta had a terrible time at the Siege (high summer in Malta); they put barrels of water at intervals along the walls so that they could climb in and immerse themselves to cool off. But if you were lucky enough to live in Scotland that was probably less of an issue.

Right. The Ottoman ships never got so far.

Actually they got a lot further. But as far as I know they never stopped off at Scotland.

re: 85

If there's not a novel about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Janszoon there should be.

Here you go

http://www.slavetofortune.com/?p=271

86 his son is wild too, owned a tavern on lower Manhattan and was given the first land grant to Coney Island.

On s/b in

Salé was an independent pirate republic and not under Ottoman control.

More later I'm about to watch a film

83: Not to dispute the general point, but AIUI by the siege the Knights were a gunpowder based force armored like the Spanish tercio. So, a lot less than full plate.

Also in fairness to White, in the course of TOAFK the nonsense disappears and knights in plate have no trouble questing anf fighting wars. And White didn't pretend to historical accuracy in any sense.

90: Algiers though?

94: AFAIK Ottoman sovereignty was only ever nominal west of roughly Tripoli.

Two of the commanders at the Siege were Algerine corsair admirals; Dragut Rais and (I think) Piali Rais. So when the Porte said jump, the Algerines, at least in the 16th century, said how high.

"One of the commanders at the Bulge was a British general; Bernard Montgomery. So when the White House said jump, the British, at least in the 20th century, said how high."
The corsairs and the Knights were in much the same business: piracy, extortion, slaving. I'm not saying the Porte's opinion weighed nothing, but that doesn't mean sovereignty.

That clanking sound you can hear is the analogy ban dying of heatstroke.

Seriously though, 96 alone doesn't prove what you say it does.

96 Dragut Rais was based in Tripoli. And, IIRC, the corsairs were fairly unreliable Ottoman allies, withdrawing when it suited them (though not Dragut Rais, he took a cannonball to the head).

After that, he was very reliable?

14: The dam that we were swimming downstream from just washed out in a flood today.

Just to remind me of how small the town is, when I looked up more info on the dam, the story was quoting the local fire chief who was also the person who had the credit for the photo with the story and is almost certainly the person who wrote the story but the local paper doesn't use bylines.

Christchurch now. Jesus fuck.

With casualties being transported by the inheritors of the Knights.

Also a source of inspiration for the perp

Tragedy, farce.

Yeah it's pretty fucking miserable. Armed police have a cordon on the corner near by & there's an improvised explosive device being disarmed at the intersection 800m away from my house, and someone from work heard gunshots while they were on their lunchtime run in Hagley Park - the Deans Ave mosque is 1250m from the office.

I used to flat two streets back from the Deans Ave mosque. Awful to imagine someone doing something so evil to people in our communities. I'm quite shook up, but obviously nothing compared to what the Muslim community must be going through.

More people murdered today than in the whole of last year.

You can hear helicopters overhead. Like the earthquake but instead of nature, it's an evil person acting out of some twisted hate. Makes it a lot harder to cope with.

And the Climate Change Minister was punched in the face when he was walking to work yesterday by some guy enraged about the UN migration pact thing. Feels awful -- NZ isn't some kind of paradise of course but this kind of political/religious violence is new.

Keir!

I just saw the news. I'm so sorry.

109: yes, I saw that story; completely eclipsed by what happened today, of course, but still awful. My sympathies.