Is it time for Red Flag laws?

[LesPalenik]

If I remember correctly, lots of powers-that-be in the west didn't have that big a problem with what Hitler was instituting. Let's not paint the west as holier than it actually was.

Very true, and nobody here painted the west as holy, it was their choice between appeasement and standing up to Hitler. France's Premier Daladier and British Prime Minister Chamberlain signed together with Hitler and Mussolini the Munich Pact, which sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Upon return to Britain, Chamberlain proudly declared that the meeting had achieved “peace in our time". It wasn't a very wise decision as the history showed a few years later when embarassed Chamberlain announced state of war between Germany and Britain.

Although the agreement was to give into Hitler’s hands only the Sudentenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazi war machine 66 percent of Czechoslovakia’s coal, 70 percent of its iron and steel, and 70 percent of its electrical power. It also left the Czech nation open to complete domination by Germany. In short, the Munich Pact sacrificed the autonomy of Czechoslovakia on the altar of short-term peace-very short term.

After all, it was Neville Chamberlain who would be best remembered as the champion of the Munich Pact, having met privately with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, the dictator’s mountaintop retreat, before the Munich conference. Chamberlain, convinced that Hitler’s territorial demands were not unreasonable (and that Hitler was a “gentleman”), persuaded the French to join him in pressuring Czechoslovakia to submit to the Fuhrer’s demands.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hitler-appeased-at-munich


Walk away from the trouble when you can, but sometimes you got to fight when you are a man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEJniCCuqR4

[Alan Klein]

"Adnam, you must be patient and hold your fire.  Assad will run out of bombs before he kills all of us."

[Farmer]

Good points again, and not only in the fields of violence or business.
For example, most doctors and nutritionists were at one time taught and still believe that cooking with olive oil and drinking milk is healthy (despite numerous new studies which debunked those myths). 

https://www.pritikin.com/your-health/healthy-living/eating-right/1103-whats-wrong-with-olive-oil.html

Really?  You're using a commercial operation's largely unsourced claims to debunk something despite the clear conflict of interest they have?

This is a lovely example of cognitive bias.

And to all of you who are "old and experienced" - how often do you discuss when other veterans hold different views to you?  Do you just dismiss them, even though they have the same experiences as you?  What about those who fought on the other side?  They often hold quite different views.  History, as they say, is written by the victors.  That alone should tell you know to be sceptical of the views until they're otherwise tested. 

Your experiences are valid and important - indeed, I will say critical, as part of the narrative and from which to draw when considering related issues.  But they are not, just by being direct experiences, somehow utterly transformative or knowledge-giving.  Around 4am Saturday morning I was rushed to hospital because I wouldn't breath.  For about a minute I couldn't breath at all, then for a few minutes I was barely able to get enough air to stay conscious.  I was choking due to a viral throat infection.  I'm OK (obviously :-)).  Am I now an expert in medical responses, transport, choking, near-death experiences, or anything else related?  Of course, not.  And, yes, that's an extreme example of a single event and many of you are providing thoughts based on years of experience.  Well, I first learned first aid when I was 14 (34 years ago).  That doesn't make me a doctor.  Fighting in a war doesn't make you a general.  Data is not the plural of anecdote.

If you're prepared to dismiss anyone without direct experience, you're limiting most progress.  Of course a lot of progress comes from people without extensive (or any) real training in an area, particularly when it's a new area, but most comes from people who research the field, and the constant dismissal on the basis of "you don't have any experience" is ridiculous.  I'm sure Slobo did have some bad professors in business school, but I'm also sure they had more to offer if he'd been open to the idea of listening to them even when they went against what he through he "knew" with absolute certainty.  Maybe he wouldn't have changed his mind, but if he had explored the ideas and concepts he may have come up with something else, or just reaffirmed his previous views but now with more support.

Anyway, if you only want to discuss things with people with direct experience, that's a very small pool and getting smaller every day.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Phil, you seem to be drowning in your own generalizations

[LesPalenik]

Really?  You're using a commercial operation's largely unsourced claims to debunk something despite the clear conflict of interest they have?
This is a lovely example of cognitive bias.

Phil, I'm sorry for quoting a commercial source. It just happened to be the first link on my Google hit list.
Furthermore, I'll be the first to admit that there is too much conflicting information out there. It took me several years and sifting through a lot of contradictory information based on all kinds of studies to understand the nature of the heart and bone diseases. Not only on the causes, but also on the reversal of thoses diseases.
 
So instead of the aforementioned source, here are some very reputable cardiologists (who do not making living by selling any proprietory supplements or elixirs).

Deane Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn, Colin Campbell, Neil Barnard, John McDougall.  They have all many eye-opening articles and videos online. There are now other doctors of that school, but the above mentioned doctors were the pioneers in advocating the plant-based diet (some of them grew up originally on dairy and cattle farms), and the first two are were instrumental in making Bill Clinton switch to the healthy diets. All of these doctors (incl. Bill Clinton whose interest in human anatomy was slightly different) are in great health, and some of them are in their eighties.

https://www.ornish.com/zine/larry-king-live-dr-ornish-heart-disease/

As to the fallacy of dairy products being good for your bones, you just need to google "Is milk good for bones"?

here is one article from forbes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/fayeflam/2014/10/30/holy-cow-study-suggests-milk-is-bad-for-bones-heart-has-the-medical-establishment-lied-to-us/#6389a39c148f

and here is a very good book, whose author analysed hundreds of international studies on the subject.

https://www.amazon.ca/Building-Bone-Vitality-Revolutionary-Osteoporosis-Without/dp/0071600191
just read the Amazon preview

Calcium pills don't work. Dairy products don't strengthen bones. Drugs may be dangerous.
For years, doctors have been telling us to drink milk, eat dairy products, and take calcium pills to improve our bone vitality. The problem is, they’re wrong.

Last year, I posted something similar with more references on the subject:
http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=117612.msg981015#msg981015

I'm not trying to change anyone. All I want to do is to make people aware of the new - and I believe, more scientific and more credible information on those subjects.

[Farmer]

Les - thanks, those are much better sources.  The excellent thing about the scientific approach is that we can change our views as better data becomes available and as we expand our experience and knowledge.  Shame on all those academics going back on old data and updating and rechecking in light of new methods or understanding, right?

The other thing to be careful about is comments like "they're well into their 80s and very healthy" - which is a paraphrase, of course.  There are people with all sorts of diets who live well into their 80s.  "Eat food.  Mostly plants.  Not too much.".  Individuals clearly react differently to different diets.  You can take two people, the same age, sex, weight, height, basic health profile and background, same sugar levels and feed them a packet of jelly beans.  Once of them will spike their sugar levels and the other will have almost no reaction.  The current investigations are into customised diets based on a wide range of input and baseline factors and data that can provide general direction to individuals about what would suit them the best.  That's really exciting stuff - understanding sufficient to deliver targeted results.  Again, shame on those academics!

Regarding calcium - I remember 20 odd years ago when I snapped my tibia and fibula in half and had my leg put back together, that the doctor talked to me about calcium and so on to support regrowth.  He asked me about my diet, which is pretty common - more meat than is probably ideal, but lots of vegetables and a fish, meat, grains, dairy, etc.  In other words, a wide variety of things.  He said I wouldn't have any problems and a supplement wouldn't be of any use because I should be getting all the calcium I need already.  Only in the last few years have we finally seen commentary about the vast waste and con that the dietary supplement industry largely is.  Unless you're shown to be deficient in something and can't get it any other way, supplements are of little to no value.

[Farmer]

Phil, you seem to be drowning in your own generalizations

They say drowning is not an unpleasant way to go, but then there's water boarding, and I've never heard of a recovered drowning victim saying it was a fun experience.  If it was anything like the choking I had for several minutes, it's horrific.  It's terrifying.  It's even more devastating to watch your wife looking at you while she's talking to the emergency operator and knowing she's wondering if this is the last time she'll be talking to you, and even worse because you can't talk back (can't breath, can't talk - a sure sign that someone isn't too bad is when they tell you "I can't breath"...).  When you start to see the world swimming around you, and your head is bursting, and when your bladder loses control but you're fighting with every muscle in your body to force some air out so you can get some more back in, the utter relief of that first little noise of air passing through a tiny, tiny gap that you've somehow managed to cough out is palpable.  My torso, my core, even my arms, ache from the physical exertion like I've been through 12 rounds in the ring and taken a beating.

What can I tell you?  It was very specific, mate.  And I think I was very specific but you're choosing to wave the generalisation wand to avoid responding :-)  All is good.  I'm still on this side and will be able to annoy you for some time yet with any luck!

Oh, and the socialised medicine had paramedics here within 6 minutes of the call - even if I had stopped breathing completely (as opposed to not being able to breath), there's a very good chance they would have revived me.  I imagine it's not too bad doing a code red call at 4am, not a lot to get in the way.

[LesPalenik]

Les - thanks, those are much better sources.  The excellent thing about the scientific approach is that we can change our views as better data becomes available and as we expand our experience and knowledge.  Shame on all those academics going back on old data and updating and rechecking in light of new methods or understanding, right?

I don't want to hijack this thread and will add / quote only that:
Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian doctor and early pioneer of antiseptic procedures discovered by chance and observation that the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as "childbed fever") could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. When he proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards, his advice was met with a strong resistance from the medical establishment and his ideas were rejected by other doctors.
Semmelweis could offer at that time no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were even offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands. Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist's research, practiced and operated, using hygienic methods, with great success.

I see today a definite parallel with many (fortunately not all) medical professionals who still rely on limited and outdated information from their university days and frankly, very few of them learned at that time anything about the benefits of healthy nutrition.

[Rob C]

Oh, and the socialised medicine had paramedics here within 6 minutes of the call - even if I had stopped breathing completely (as opposed to not being able to breath), there's a very good chance they would have revived me.  I imagine it's not too bad doing a code red call at 4am, not a lot to get in the way.

Be happy you're not in Britain.

Our "socialised medicine" has many problems, and your six minutes is amazing. My younger granddaughter is a doctor, and one evening on her way back home she came upon a fresh road accident and stopped to help. It took an hour for the ambulance to arrive, and this is within Manchester itself with police also on the scene.

It isn't a matter of skills, it seems, but of logistics and the demand upon hospìtals, often unwarranted, made simply by patients going there to A&E because of difficulties in getting appointments with local GPs.

Your choking experience is something with which I sympathise; having been subject to acid reflux too often, I know too well the feeling when you wake up unable to breath because something is blocking your tubes. I am always a bit surpised when I manage to expel air that I thought wasn't in my lungs, but thank goodness that it was, because otherwise, nothing was going to be going back into them but acid. For many years now I can't eat a damned thing after about seven in the evening, latest. I suppose if suicide were ever in my mind, the way would be reminiscent of the prisoner's last meal: pig out on a late plate of all the things the cardio has banned for the past few years, especially the French cheeses and the wine, yep, those delightful whites that I used to love... oh, and some double-cream on top of my coffee, and then go straight to bed. Now there's an idea!

;-)

Rob

[Farmer]

Location is part of it, and time of day.  They respond according to urgency.  "Not breathing" is a code red - lights and sirens and break the road rules as required (and within their training) if/when safe to do so.  They also dispatch a second unit that is the second nearest from another direction if available and then cancel one once one arrives.

We also have a problem here with people attending A&E and calling ambulances when it's not life threatening/very serious, but there's a really big campaign been running for about a year to educate people more.  It seems to be working.

A few cases at work where we've called an ambulance but the casualty seems stable, it's been closer to 30 or 40 minutes and they will re-route as required based on urgency.  It's not perfect, but it's pretty good here.

I've also seen them use a helo over short distances particularly for road accidents where a motor vehicle just wouldn't get through - watched one land just 100 meters away from my house at the time and the hospital was only 7km away.  Actually, we use helos quite a lot here because of large distances and low population density.

Reflux?  Yeah - I've had that and the same experience.  This was a different level which I realised pretty quickly.  Normally I've been able to overcome the reflux events within 10 seconds at most.  I use a sleeping wedge which makes a huge difference and if I'm planning a big night I just go for a smaller day, as it were.  Haven't had a problem in years, fortunately.  But I can highly recommend a sleeping wedge - I even have a travel one.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

How did we get from red flags to code red!? Too many reds among the members?

[Jeremy Roussak]

How did we get from red flags to code red!? Too many reds among the members?

Maybe many of us are of an age when the latter is more interesting than the former.

Jeremy

[Rob C]

Maybe many of us are of an age when the latter is more interesting than the former.

Jeremy

Unfortunately, probably too true!

I suspect there might also be a relationship there with the craze for photographic equipment: after a while, it becomes impossible to avoid the conclusion that the purchase of stuff, beyond a certain reasonable level of quality, brings absolutely nothing new to one's photographic ability. The moment your camera and lenses are capabe of making a crisp image in the circumstances in which you seek such, if you do, then you have reached the point of peace both for mind and wallet.

Rob

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

This blind belief in the truthfulness of academic research is outright scary. As I said many times, science is the new religion for some.

How many studies that took years to research, were peer-reviewed, and published in respectable publications, were found to be faulty and debunked either contemporaneously or a bit later?...

Further to the above, an eye-opener article about "research" (emphasis mine):

https://medium.com/@drjasonfung/the-corruption-of-evidence-based-medicine-killing-for-profit-41f2812b8704

The 2 most prestigious journals of medicine in the world are The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. Richard Horton, editor in chief of The Lancet said this in 2015

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue”

Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of NEJM wrote in 2009 that,

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor”

So here’s a damning list of all the problems of EBM:

Selective Publication
Rigged outcomes
Advertorials
Reprint Revenues
Bribery of Journal Editors
Publication Bias
Financial Conflicts of Interests

[Jeremy Roussak]

All perhaps true, Slobodan; but medicine which is not based on evidence - homeopathy, to dignify it with the description "medicine", for example - is at least as dangerous. Much research is a waste of time, done for the benefit of the researchers who need publications to further their academic credentials. But not - far from not - all.

Jeremy

[Farmer]

When using academic papers for my own research or course work, I've rarely relied on just one.  You investigate many reports, journals, papers, etc., to find consistent support for or against a certain view (and if you find both sides you need to dig deeper to understand why).

Undoubtedly there are charlatans everywhere, but at least academic papers can be checked, tested, investigated, and so on.  It may not be perfect (it's not), but it's orders of magnitude ahead of personal anecdote and cognitive bias.

[Jim Pascoe]

A 78-year-old pensioner in England has been arrested under suspicion of murder for stabbing a much younger man who, with a companion who apparently fled, broke into the pensioner's house to rob. One of the wannabe thieves was armed with a screwdriver...

Seems to me that the house should be considered sacred, that anyone breaking in deserves anything they get thrown back at them for their efforts. It's the one place where I believe guns shoud be allowed, and allowed to be used. No need for war weapons there; all close-range stuff and a pistol perfectly good and more easy to deploy that a rifle that could more easily be wrestled away from the user.

Rob

So this time the burgler entered with a screwdriver expecting the elderly resident to be defenceless and easily intimidated.  by your suggestion, residents should all get guns to defend themselves. Next time burgler goes armed with a pistol - fully prepared to kill if threatened.  The elderly resident is caught unawares, goes for his gun, and is killed quickly by the merciless intruder.

Or - misguided, unarmed 15 year old enters a house to steal some petty cash and is shot dead by petrified householder.  Where is the proportionate justice in that?

I think the escalation is both wrong and pointless.  I am obviously referring to the majority of the civilised world and not the special case of the already heavily armed US.

Jim

edit (having now read the entire thread - phew - I can see that we are largely in agreement on this topic!)

[Jim Pascoe]

Well, cars are as dangerous as anything else when handled badly or intentionally used as weapons, but they also have a good, fundamental purpose.

I don't really see that guns can be sheltered under that umbrella; after all, their sole design purpose is to kill. There is no other legitimate function for them, unless as threat in a defensive sense, which is but one step removed from killing or at least seriously injuring in a defensive move. In short, they serve only to cause damage, either terminal or serious enough to incapacitate.

All of which seems to me to indicate that their use outwith home protection or policing should be banned. Period.

Hunting is a whole other topic, of course, and even there, that folks can drive around with rifles on racks in their vehicles, whether they are really about to go out and catch something for dinner or not, strikes me as bizarre. Just imagine: some guys stop for a beer or three, get into an argument or just feel macho, go out to the vehicle and take one of those killing machines down off the rack... How do you reason with any guy with a head of beer, his manhood under imaginary threat, and a huge gun in his hands? And all in front of his equally nutty peers? His mother later telling the local press that her son is really a good boy won't help you and your widow one goddam bit, will it?

Hey Rob - I'm just reading through this thread for the first time and coincidentally referring to two of your posts.  I quite agree with your points here - particularly the one about cars.  Cars are incredibly dangerous and I personally think their use should be curtailed and controlled more.  But they do have a really positive side too, and that has to be balanced with their disadvantages.  A misused car is potentially lethal.  A misused firearm is much more often lethal (taking into account the amount of time it is in use) - as you say, that is it's sole purpose. 

Jim

[Jim Pascoe]

Actually, it's not the guns or the knives that are at fault. It's the people. When I was a kid there were guns all all around, yet murders were very rare. It's a behavior problem, not a gun problem.

I did find this online - though it is a bit out of date now.  Maybe your recollection of murders when you were young is anecdotal and you were unaware of the overall picture in the US.  In any case the murder rate seems to be more aligned with social and economic changes, not in the inherent morality of the population.  These are things that could be addressed in the US and elsewhere.  Removing firearms from the population is obviously a very long-term process and I agree is not going to happen quickly.

"Across the country, and even internationally, the U.S. murder rate receives more attention than any other crime rate. The trend chart below shows the murder rate as a recurring flow of sustained increases and decreases spread over the 20th century. The rate increased through the early 1900s, peaking in 1933 at 9.7 murders per 100,000 population. The rate then decreased until 1960, followed by a sharp increase until the mid-1970s. The murder rate fluctuated over the last 25 years at a historically high level, as did the overall index crime rate, but has declined rapidly during the 1990s. The murder rate in 1998, the last full year of available data, hit a 30-year low of 6.9 murders per 100,000 population. Preliminary FBI statistics show this downward trend continuing into 1999."

[RSL]

Problem with that, Jim, is that in order to have any idea of what's going on you need to look at where the murders are occurring. You also need to examine the statisticians' idea of what a "murder" is. Figures don't lie, but liars figure. Chicago always has been a murder pit. So was New York until a conservative mayor got things under control and turned the place -- for a short time -- into the safest large city in the U.S.

I was brought up in a suburb of Detroit. When I was in high school I was able to take my dates downtown to the heart of Detroit for a musical -- I especially remember watching Student Prince with a girl I was awfully hot for -- then having dinner after the show, walking around the city with no thought of danger. If you did that nowadays you might make it two blocks before you'd at the very least be robbed.

As far as removing firearms from the U.S. population, you're right. It's going to be a long-term process. . . stretching to eternity. It ain't gonna happen. Not now. Not ever.

What I think is interesting is the astounding murder rate in jolly old England now that the gun removal has taken place. Golly. You'd think now that those guns can't go out on the street and shoot people things would get better.