“The man who thinks he knows does not yet know what knowing is.”
-- Michel de Montaigne --
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-- Michel de Montaigne --
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In the past week I came across two items that struck me as strange, but a sign, I guess, of our changing --- what? Priorities? Communication methods? Some kind of social disconnect? Or a changing way of connecting?
It struck me as weird.
Bill Nye the Science Guy collapsed mid-sentence on stage a few days ago while giving a presentation at the University of Southern California, before hundreds of students. He'd been a bit incoherent before collapsing, and it looked for all the world like a stroke. (He's ok now, he was just overtired.)
This part is what got me. He got up, asked how long he was out, and
... continued with the presentation but began slurring his words and stumbled against his laptop, according to Camacho, who said that when Nye first collapsed, students were “texting and updating their Twitter statuses” instead of going to Nye’s aid. [emphasis mine]That bounced around in my head for a few days. Did it really occur to no one to go up and help him? Did it occur to no one to call 911? And then I found the next one.
A grandfather and grandson were canoeing on the Hudson River, and capsized in Tivoli Bays, in very cold water. The grandson, 17, texted family and friends from the water to tell them what had happened. Others apparently had enough sense to call for rescue.
Why didn't the kid call 911? Was his first instinct to text friends?
Is there a pattern here?
I don't understand.
(And when did "text" become a verb, anyway? That got past me!)
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5 comments:
I know if I were out in the woods in Illinois, 911 on my cell phone would call Maryland Heights, MO. I don;t know if 911 would be my first choice either, especially if I were visiting someplace I didn't drive to.
I guess you need to know the area where they capsized. Tivoli Bays is a backwater of the Hudson River that cuts into the Bard College campus, across the river from Kingston, just a bit down from the Village of Tivoli. You can see all from there. It's woody, but not backwoods. Calling 911 would get either the city of Kingston or the Northern Dutchess call center. When I was an EMT, we often responded to calls from that area.
...Also, judging from the number of units that responded, each of those friends and family he texted called a different service directly. Enormous waste of resources.
Three women died in Newark a couple of years ago. The ladies had been to a church service and the driver backed her car into the river. These women were still in the car, calling people on their cell phone before they drowned. Not one of them called 911.
Just another sabre-toothed tiger. People who don't dial 911 when they have an emergency deserve what they get. Sorry if that sounds harsh and unpopular.
They deserve to be spanked for the waste of resources, though.
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