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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 09/04/2006 : 23:00:49 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Ricky
Perhaps you could have said all that instead of just "INEVITABLE" which made it sound like you were waiting for it to happen...
Maybe Dude was like me: Not waiting, certainly not hoping, but expecting this general sort of thing to happen.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 04:21:25 [Permalink]
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Half said:
quote:
Maybe Dude was like me: Not waiting, certainly not hoping, but expecting this general sort of thing to happen.
Lets just say that my first response to the news wasn't suprise.
"Irwin killed by wild animal!" is not a shocking headline.
Shit, I didn't post a prediction of his messy death in our predictions thread because I thought it violated the "obvious" rule.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 06:29:46 [Permalink]
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| You are 100% correct, but your comments are still rude as hell. |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 10:12:42 [Permalink]
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I don't think he is 100% correct. I think we perceive risk one way, but the facts tell a different story.
Occupational fatalities due to animal-related eventsquote:
Quote:
RICKY LEE LANGLEY, MD, MPH; JAMES LEE HUNTER, DVM, MPH
From the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Section of Human Ecology and Epidemiology, Raleigh, NC.
Objective.—To better understand the extent of animal-related fatalities in the workplace.
Methods.—This study utilized Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries files from the US Department of Labor for the years 1992–1997 to describe the events surrounding human workplace fatalities associated with animals.
Results.—During the 6-year time period, 350 workplace deaths could be associated with an animal-related event. Cattle and horses were the animals primarily involved, and workers in the agricultural industry experienced the majority of events. Many deaths involved transportation events, either direct collision with the animal or highway crashes trying to avoid collision with an animal. Exotic animals, primarily elephants and tigers, were responsible for a few deaths. A small number of workers died of a zoonotic infection.
Conclusions.—We found that approximately 1% of workplace fatalities are associated with an animal-related event. Methods to decrease the frequency of an animal injury are suggested.
An average of 15 to 16 deaths from dog attacks occur in the United States annually.
Seventy-seven (22%) of the deaths involved a motor vehicle crash (MVC), either collision with the animal or swerving to avoid collision with the animal and wrecking, or being run over by an animal-drawn wagon
Twenty-six people died as a result of airplane collisions with birds
For deer-related events, the occupation most frequently cited was truck driver
Exotic animals are also responsible for several fatalities each year, especially in circus workers and zookeepers.
leading cause of unintentional death in the USA -> motor vehicle accident
It's the things we do everyday that are sometimes the most dangerous.
quote:
Deaths and Injuries in the Workplace
* There were 5,300 workplace fatalities in 2001 due to unintentional injuries.
* There were 3.9 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2001.
* On the job, 3.9 million American workers suffered disabling injuries in 2001.
* Motor vehicle crashes accounted for 2,200 of the 5,300 workplace fatalities.
* The agriculture industry accounted for 700 deaths and 130,000 disabling injuries in 2001. Agriculture workers had the second highest death rate among the major industry divisions.
* Work injuries cost Americans $132.1 billion in 2001. That amounts to $970 per worker.
* Nearly 9 out of 10 deaths and about three-fifths of the disabling injuries suffered by American workers in 2001 occurred off-the-job.
Deaths and Injuries in the Home
* There were 33,200 fatalities and 8,000,000 disabling injuries in 2001. This represents 12.0 fatalities per 100,000 population.
* In the home, there is a fatal injury every 16 minutes and a disabling injury every 4 seconds.
* The four leading fatal events are poisonings, falls, fires and burns, and suffocation by ingested object.
* The leading cause of death in the home, poisoning, took the lives of 11,500 people in 2001. This number includes deaths from drugs, medicines, other solid and liquid substances, and gases and vapors. The 25 to 44 age group had the highest death rate.
* Falls took the lives of 9,000 people, four out of five of them over the age of 65.
* Smoke inhalation accounts for the majority of deaths in home fires.
Deaths and Injuries in the Community
* The 19,000 fatalities in 2001 include deaths in public places or places used in a public way and not involving motor vehicles. Most sports, recreation, and transportation deaths are included. This number excludes work-related deaths.
* Therre is a public fatal injury every 28 minutes and a disabling injury every 5 seconds.
* The number of public unintentional-injury deaths decreased by 900, or 5%, between 2000 and 2001.
* The five leading fatal causes are falls, poisoning, drowning, suffocation by ingestion, and air, water and railroad transportation.
* People 65 and over suffer almost half of the fatalities due to public injuries.
* Recreational boating resulted in 701 deaths in 2000. Alcohol was reported to be involved in 215 (31%) of recreational boating deaths.
* 445 boating fatalities in 2000 could have been avoided if the victim had been wearing a life jacket.
The majority of these deaths were preventable with the most minor steps like having a working smoke alarm, wearing a seatbelt, a life jacket and so on.
And this was posted on JREF:
quote:
I was working on a Discovery Channel TV series called "Animal Face/Off" - stupid show, but I got to meet a heap of animal experts. They guy we got in for the reptiles works with Crocodiles in Australia, and knew Irwin quite well. From his conversations, the whole "jumping on a croc" thing seems to be pretty standard. It might look dangerous and showy to ignorant TV audiences sitting on their couch, but the way this guy told it, it's actually the safest way to grab one of the beasts.
This guy said Irwin was always very safety conscious - he was just also very experienced so he could tell when it was safe and when it wasn't. He also gave the impression of Irwin being a very serious and dedicated zoologist - not just some sort of silly play-zoo-keeper.
Yeah, he was doing a dangerous job. Working with wild animals IS dangerous. Another guy we had on the show is developing a game park system to safe Tigers, based on the South African lion game park model. He's almost been killed by his tigers quite a few times - once really bad. It's part of the risk. These guys know what the risk is.
So while there are risks Irwin took in his job, the perception those risks were larger than risks other people take in their jobs or everyday life is not born out by the facts. While we don't have a denominator on the number of people who work with exotic animals in the above cited study, it didn't stand out as an exceptionally dangerous job. And the friend of a friend account of Irwin was that he didn't take as many risks as it might have appeared.
Do you have a working smoke alarm, Dude? Just curious. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 10:54:54 [Permalink]
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I have to agree with beskep on this one. I'm sure that whenever Irwin handled a poisonous reptile, medics were standing just off camera with the appropriate antidote in case of a bite. Just because he appeared to be taking risks doesn't mean that he was. Part of what makes his death so freakish, apart from the rarity of course*, was the location of the wound. Stingray venom isn't fatal in and of itself. Being stabbed in the heart is. Had he been hit almost anywhere else and this would have been merely a minor scrape, if a painful one.
I think it's ridiculous to imply that Irwin's death was inevitable. He was probably more in danger of dying while traveling to one of the exotic locations he visited than from the animals he encountered once there.
* There were only 2 recorded stingray deaths in Australia in the last century, and Irwin's death was the first since 1945.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 09/05/2006 11:03:36 |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 11:02:22 [Permalink]
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If not his death by some kind of wild animal, certainly Steve Irwin being killed by a stingray in particular was a shocker. According to Wiki, only 17 people are documented as having ever been killed by stingrays: quote:
. . .
Fatal stings, such as that which killed Australian naturalist and television personality Steve Irwin (an animal documentarian) in 2006,[2] are extremely rare. (As of 1996, worldwide known deaths from stingray barb injuries numbered 17.),[3] As of 2001 there has been only one person documented to have survived a stingray injury to the heart.[4]. Also, in case of Irwin, it was the site of injury (the heart) and the wound that proved to be fatal, and not the venom of the stingray.
. . .
Wiki's opinion aside, I suspect it's too early to make any firm conclusions as to whether it was physical injury to his heart and/or arteries, venom, or a combination of these, that killed Steve Irwin. Venom in the heart, delivered by what can be up to a foot-long, serrated spear-point, seems likely to me. Hopefully, an autopsy will be performed, and we will have better answers.
Certainly I had long had a feeling that Steve Irwin was a risk-taker, who repeatedly endangered others (his wife and at least one child) with his stunts. If he really staged these stunts to appear dangerous when they were actually safe, that still leaves question in my mind of his encouraging unsafe behavior by people who may watch his documentaries and emulate what they think they are seeing.
But Steve did love animals, and his legacy hopefully will be for people to better understand and protect them. He had a sense of showmanship that did work for promoting nature. Crikey, Steve, you'll be missed, mate!
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 11:24:06 [Permalink]
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Im only agreeing that it is anything but a surprise to find out the TCH was killed by a wild animal.
Beskeptigal, you erroniously equate him with cowboys and other animal handlers, yet I doubt any of them regularly catch and film any of the 100 deadliest animals, Steve Irwin was his own category IMO, or at least it started with him.
No doubt he was a master of saftey at his workplace at the Austrailia Zoo, but his non-workplace saftey was anything but normal.
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"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 13:22:23 [Permalink]
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beskeptigal said:
quote:
So while there are risks Irwin took in his job, the perception those risks were larger than risks other people take in their jobs or everyday life is not born out by the facts.
You mean to say they are not born out by your misrepresentation of the facts.
There are no statistics to cover deaths for people like Irwin, because there are only a few people in the world who use his extremely interactive approach with wild animals in the wild.
Throwing up stats for other everyday hazzards and then trying to claim that this normal every day shit is more dangerous than what Irwin was doing is... ridiculous. It makes you look foolish.
H.H. said:
quote:
* There were only 2 recorded stingray deaths in Australia in the last century, and Irwin's death was the first since 1945.
There are only 17 recorded deaths from stingrays, ever. So what? If anything that is evidence that Irwin's hands-on approach with wild animals is wildly dangerous.
quote:
I'm sure that whenever Irwin handled a poisonous reptile, medics were standing just off camera with the appropriate antidote in case of a bite. Just because he appeared to be taking risks doesn't mean that he was.
Of course there were medics, and a film crew, and so on.... which is the only reason the guy lived as long as he did. But how does any of that reduce risk? It doesn't. It mitigates the consequences of his risks.
When you stalk up to wild rhinos, you are taking a big risk. When you grab a venemous snake by the tail, and you are 100 miles from the nearest hospital, you are taking a big risk.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 13:28:55 [Permalink]
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Dude, did Irwin stand a greater chance of premature death than the average citizen? Absolutely. Was his death inevitable? Not even close.
Would you even think about calling the deaths of the astronauts who perished aboard Colombia "inevitable" since space travel is such a high risk venture?
quote:
Of course there were medics, and a film crew, and so on.... which is the only reason the guy lived as long as he did. But how does any of that reduce risk? It doesn't. It mitigates the consequences of his risks.
Airbags reduce the risk of dying in an automobile crash. They don't reduce the risk of being involved in an accident. Similarly, the presence of medics and antidotes would reduce the risk of a fatality, which is what everyone else in this thread seems to be talking about but you.
quote:
There are only 17 recorded deaths from stingrays, ever. So what? If anything that is evidence that Irwin's hands-on approach with wild animals is wildly dangerous.
Oh, you have evidence that Irwin was handling the stingray? Because in all the accounts I've heard, he was simply swimming above one, a not uncommon practice around the normally docile creatures.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 09/05/2006 14:56:02 |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 15:10:49 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by BigPapaSmurf
Im only agreeing that it is anything but a surprise to find out the TCH was killed by a wild animal.
Beskeptigal, you erroniously equate him with cowboys and other animal handlers, yet I doubt any of them regularly catch and film any of the 100 deadliest animals, Steve Irwin was his own category IMO, or at least it started with him.
No doubt he was a master of saftey at his workplace at the Austrailia Zoo, but his non-workplace saftey was anything but normal.
I didn't equate him with anyone. I just looked for information on accidental cause of death and death by animals. And I noted the short coming of the data presented because there isn't the proper denominator to compare Irwin's activities exactly with other activities for risk level.
But I can say with certainty, perceived risk is almost never close to real risk.
The factors involved in risk perception according to Sandman:
Bunch of fatalities at once compared to spread out, thus the plane crash seems riskier than the car crash.
Unfamiliar seems riskier than the familiar, so wrestling crocks seems riskier than walking with traffic nearby.
Controllability (feel safer when you drive than when the pilot has control).
How awful you perceive the effects will be increases your perception of risk, thus people exaggerate the risk of being eaten by a shark and don't perceive the risk of drowning to be as high as it is.
Media attention increases risk perception, obviously, as in the current harping on terrorism.
You can go to the site to look at this more in depth. The bottom line is Irwin may easily have been perceived to be taking much more risk than he actually was.
Some actual risk comparison figures:quote:
Risk - Risk of Death/Person/Year
Influenza/1 in 5000
Leukemia/1 in 12,500
Struck by an automobile (United Kingdom)/1 in 16,600
Struck by an automobile (United States)/1 in 20,000
Floods (United States)/1 in 455,000
Tornadoes (Midwest United States)/1 in 455,000
Earthquakes (California)/1 in 588,000
Bites of venomous creatures (United Kingdom)/1 in 5 million
Lightning (United Kingdom)/1 in 10 million
Falling aircraft (United States)/1 in 10 million
Release from nuclear power plant
At site boundary (United States)/1 in 10 million
At one kilometer (United Kingdom)/1 in 10 million
Flooding of dike (the Netherlands)/1 in 10 million
Explosion, pressure vehicle (United States)/1 in 20 million
Falling aircraft (United Kingdom)/1 in 50 million
Meteorite /1 in 100 billion
Table B.5: Risks Estimated to Increase the Probability of
Death in Any Year by One Chance in a Million
Smoking 1.4 cigarettes
Drinking .5 liter of wine
Spending 1 hour in a coal mine
Spending 3 hours in a coal mine
Living 2 days in New York or Boston
Traveling 6 minutes by canoe
Traveling 10 miles by bicycle
Traveling 300 miles by car
Flying 1000 miles by jet
Flying 6000 miles by jet
Living 2 months in Denver
Living 2 months in average stone or brick building
One chest X ray taken in a good hospital
Living 2 months with a cigarette smoker
Eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter
Drinking Miami drinking water for 1 year
Drinking 30 12 oz cans of diet soda
Living 5 years at site boundary of a typical nuclear power plant
Drinking 1000 24-oz soft drinks from plastic bottles
Living 20 years near a polyvinyl chloride plant
Living 150 years within 20 miles of a nuclear power plant
Living 50 years within 5 miles of a nuclear power plant
Eating 100 charcoal-broiled steaks
These aren't easily compared to Irwin's activities because they're not comparing his unique activity and as I said before. But they do give you an idea that we perceive risk for various reasons, the least of which is often actual risk.
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| Edited by - beskeptigal on 09/05/2006 15:12:43 |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 15:13:56 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by H. Humbert
Dude, did Irwin stand a greater chance of premature death than the average citizen? Absolutely. Was his death inevitable? Not even close.
Would you even think about calling the deaths of the astronauts who perished aboard Colombia "inevitable" since space travel is such a high risk venture?
quote:
Of course there were medics, and a film crew, and so on.... which is the only reason the guy lived as long as he did. But how does any of that reduce risk? It doesn't. It mitigates the consequences of his risks.
Airbags reduce the risk of dying in an automobile crash. They don't reduce the risk of being involved in an accident. Similarly, the presence of medics and antidotes would reduce the risk of a fatality, which is what everyone else in this thread seems to be talking about but you.
quote:
There are only 17 recorded deaths from stingrays, ever. So what? If anything that is evidence that Irwin's hands-on approach with wild animals is wildly dangerous.
Oh, you have evidence that Irwin was handling the stingray? Because in all the accounts I've heard, he was simply swimming above one, a not uncommon practice around the normally docile creatures.
At least one person understands what I have been saying.
My guess is being on the reef was the greatest risk being taken here and you don't have to be Irwin to be on that reef. |
| Edited by - beskeptigal on 09/05/2006 15:15:40 |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 15:19:15 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dude
...
You mean to say they are not born out by your misrepresentation of the facts.
...
You and BPS did not read carefully what I wrote, and/or didn't understand what I said. Either way, this comment is absurd.
I don't even know what Irwin's real risks were. I'm just saying they are easily perceived as being greater than they actually were and that many things we don't perceive as risky are much more risky than we think. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 16:34:57 [Permalink]
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H.H. said:
quote:
Oh, you have evidence that Irwin was handling the stingray? Because in all the accounts I've heard, he was simply swimming above one, a not uncommon practice around the normally docile creatures.
He and his camera crew apparently boxed it in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Irwin#Death
quote:
After reviewing the footage of the incident and speaking to the cameraman who recorded it, marine documentary filmmaker and former spearfisherman Ben Cropp speculated that the stingray "felt threatened because Steve was alongside and there was the cameraman ahead." In such a case, the stingray responds by automatically flexing the serrated barb on its tail up to a maximum of 25 cm (10 in) of length. Cropp said Irwin had accidentally boxed the animal in. "It stopped and twisted and threw up its tail with the spike, and it caught him in the chest.
beskeptigal said:
quote:
You and BPS did not read carefully what I wrote, and/or didn't understand what I said. Either way, this comment is absurd.
The absurdity here is your continued posting of irrelevant statistics and your nonsensical claim that Irwin wasn't taking risks that place him outside the norm, even for professional animal handlers.
Watch some of these, and tell me you think the guy falls into "normal" risk categories for animal handlers.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 17:00:45 [Permalink]
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Right, that's what I heard. They swam around the animal and "boxed it in." No handling of the stingray was involved, although even that wouldn't apear to rank as an extremely dangerous activity, as this diving group illustrates:
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 09/05/2006 : 17:09:02 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dude
The absurdity here is your continued posting of irrelevant statistics and your nonsensical claim that Irwin wasn't taking risks that place him outside the norm, even for professional animal handlers.
That would have been an absurd claim, but beskeptigal never made it. Take a deep breath, read through her post again, and stop trying to save face by arguing against a strawman of your own creation. This is a skeptic's forum, Dude. We aren't fooled by such tactics.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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