SJ, just because ive never been down a mine doesnt mean i dont have the right to interpolate and interpet information and give my point of view.

if thats the case, maybe you could start a thread telling everyone how it is and then asking everyone to refrain from posting because you've been in a mine so theres no use anyone else posting about it.

im using statistic to back my case. 100% of the miners survived for 2 months. 100%. you cant tell me that it was life or death down there and that they were close to death for 2 whole months. if that was the case, i dare say some lives would have been lost over those 70 days.

nobody said its not difficult down there, and no one said its easy. but i fail to believe that their lives hinged in the balance. reports coming out is that most have a full bill of health with some minor complications with about 5 miners. a far cry from the dire scenario that you depict. i dont need to be down a mine to make that sort of qualitative asessment.

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for what it's worth, i thought from jump that it was entirely possible to separate the television packaging out from what was happening on the ground and focus on the former without having to stray into saying too much about "what was really going on" with the latter, and this for a lot of reasons, not least because of the sort of things that silent jay has been talking about.

this is why this is a discussion board SJ. You can choose to contribute and give your side of the story, or you can walk away. the choice is yours.

but FFS Sj, again ill tell you that i never said its a piece of piss down there and no one said it was a flippin picnic. But of course, if i have any mining questions, i'll send you a PM, because obviously im undeserved of being able to post in here because ive never been down there. Just like those people who became Chilean for a day dont deserve to be chilean because they have never been to Chile.

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I enjoyed reading about your first-hand experience, Jay. The engineering is fascinating and the kind of person who can go into a big hole in the ground for hours on end is interesting, to say the least.

The psycho-babble that some of the comments on here contained was interesting too. (That was the hated sarcasm making it's appearance.)

Maybe I'm in the minority because I like a nice break from the constant murder, rape, and destruction stories that have plagued the news.

I guess their situation wasn't life or death, but can you imagine being in a hole with no sun light for a couple months? No sex, no home cooking, no family contact. That would be the pits (pun intended). They had a shit time down there, now they're okay, and I'm happy.

"Now back to Falcon Lake, Texas, where our very own John Smith is standing by to interview the wife of the man killed by Mexican drug pirates..."

Look, I think everyone understands that life has not conquered death completely, that horrible things still happen in the world.

The point of this is that it was a story of pure joy that everyone could feel a part of.

We can admire the technical proficiency and comptency of the Chilean state in organising such an incredible rescue, a technical feat which had never before been accomplished.

As Americans (as most people here are) you ought to be proud of the scientific genius of one of your citizens that made this rescue possible.

I dont think that anybody would say that the suffering of these minors is beyond anything in human history. I dont think anyone who has any idea what it was like would underestimate how hard it was, and the bravery and toughness of these men.

As I said in my last post - from a narrative point of view, these men were dead for 17 days. There was really no hope of finding them alive, hardly any hope of finding their corpses. And suddenly they were back from the dead.

It may be sentimental: but watching the look on the kid's face when the first minor came out, watching jaded newscasters just laughing with joy as the minors came out, allowing one self to be caught up in the happiness of these families and the Chilean people - I do not consider myself to be reduced as a human being if such things make me feel sentimental. I do not consider cynicism or worldliness as some kind of higher state.

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One other thing I read, which I will just mention

When "the 33" first made contact with the outside world, the first question they asked was not for supplies or rescue. They asked for news about 3 other minors who had been separated from the men just before the accident. When the people above ground told the minors that the 3 men were safe, they heard cheers, laughter, cries of joy from the minors.

_

They are not supermen, or even heroes... just ordinary working class men who through their toughness and solidarity, stayed together and did not allow any one of the group to collapse, and thus endured hell and were reborn.

Today, and tomorrow, and every day there will be plenty of human tragedy in the world which we may mourn. I do not consider it wrong or in some way "weak" to also take joy from the good news when it happens.

That was an excellent post, Strange. Thanks for taking the time to write it.

Thoughtful post, Strange. Thanks.

Effusive slobbery emoticon ----> :icare:

i could pull out all the quotes where you said youve been down there and how anyone who hasnt been down there doesnt know shit. i think with that sort of attitude, you're definately telling everyone who hasnt been down a mine to STFU and that theres no need to post their contributions. why would we contribute? you're the go-to man obviously.

if you actually read my posts again, what you'll see that my issue with this whole thing from the very start was the sensationalism surrounding the whole thing. reporters only converged on the mine only at the time of the rescue, and in a flash they were gone. ive said all along this is all about selling stories for the networks. Media moguls dont give a damn about safety. heck, dare i say it would have worked in their favour had their been a mishap or a few deaths down there.

what i have an issue is the disparity between the news stories of mining accidents in china vs this incident. i dont anyone remembers the heroics of the chinese miners a few months back. why should you right? In that case there was over 100 miners stuck in the mine for a week. they survived by eating sawdust, coal, paper and tree bark. some of them even strapped themselves to the walls of the shaft to avoid being swept away and drowned while they slept. when you compare the two stories, its easy to see that theres an obvious bias in the reporting process. chinese mining deaths dont sell newspapers, and the guys are probably back doing their old jobs again. they probably dont have football teams offering them free trips to play football against the worlds best teams, or people offering them trips to graceland and other destinations, they probably dont have a bookdeal coming up either. Thats why i dont buy into the bullshit of this beatup. There's no such thing as fair and biased in news stories. only agendas.


fwiw i think the pic that you posted gives a good insight into life down there.

Oh, look... another ~30 miners trapped / killed in central China today.

Dlish is psychic. And let's see if anybody puts a 24/7 camera on that site.

ha!

im not psychic. but ive been told that i know it all...or not.

---------- Post added at 08:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:49 PM ----------

heres the breaking news...

and that "ha" comment was about your psychic comment P9, not the fact that 30 miners got trapped.

if these guys get saved, im going to become chinese for a day.

China's Dangerous Mines -- NTDTV.com

[Prof. Hu Xingdou, Beijing Institute of Technology]:
"I think that first the information has to be open and transparent. The situation in the Chilean mine was, from the start, broadcast to the world. In the past in China, as soon as a disaster occurred, information was blocked from the media."

I like the "gotcha" vibe I'm getting with this news of Chinese miners. It's like stories of miners getting trapped, killed, or otherwise maimed is something new.

Should we also wonder why they don't televise conflicts in Congo, Angola, and/or Darfur as they did for Iraq?

Exactly.

africa? what's that?

Africa isn't on television because white America doesn't care about black people.

SEE: Socioeconomic segregation, race-based housing policies of the 1960s, etc.

SEE: Every missing little girl on TeeVee ever. White girls? 99%. Black girls? 1%.

It's that really poor place where those nasty companies get the bulk of the security forces used in... you guessed it... Iraq.

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If by "like" you mean "see," by "gotcha" you mean "tired," and by "new" you mean "important," my work is done.

So, let's get back to the real issue that was brought up early: the suffering of cute baby animals all over the planet.

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Since the days in our imaginary tinfoil-lined cave, Jay, I've respected your knowledge & opinions. dlish was disrespectful. Let it go.

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I heard that when the first rescuer descended, he was shocked at how hot it was.
104 degrees F. & very humid.

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I suppose one adapts a little bit to a certain extent to working in these conditions.
I've lived & worked in scorching dry deserts & southern humid swampy areas,
but the being 'underground' idea, freaks me & many others I imagine.

My claustrophobia is due to an elder sociopath cousin who thought it fun to pin me down
in a sleeping bag while pumping hot air into the bag with his mother's hair dryer hose..
But I digress.

You sharing your experiences & knowledge, are welcome. Thank you.

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And also the West didnt care very much about Ethiopia kicking the shit out the Islamic government of Somalia and then moan about the pirates... and to be honest you might also note that not many Pakistani or Saudi kids went and died fighting Ethiopia either.

We could all trot out the example of the massacre of the Polish village that the Nazi's were initially charged with at Nurembourg, until they found out that actually the Russians levelled the village - so they just forgot about it.

But all of these things dont change the central point to me

The fact that there is so much bad news in the world doesnt change the fact that we can enjoy good news.

Sadly, people being killed in mines is not especially rare. People being pulled out from 700 metres underground is - and thats why the Chilean story was news.