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- #61
fubar57
General
Wow....freakin' unbelievable.....LMAO
THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO "HMMMMMMM"
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MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
PT Barnum said there's a sucker born every minute. The production rate seems to have increased markedly since his day.
special ed
1st Sergeant
- 4,847
- May 13, 2018
I taught my last daughter "If you're stupid, you die. Don't get eliminated". When she was about 4 and a half, she was standing close in front of the TV watching crazy Steve Erwin in Arizona telling the audience "The rattlesnake is the most poisonous snake in North America" while he was pulling one from under some rocks. He says" This is a really big one . If it bites you, you will die in about twenty minutes" My daughter says 'Well don't touch it, kill it" I still don't have to worry about her.
Shortround6
Major General
Unfortunately stupid people often make it into positions of authority.
I had a fire captain (smart person) that coached his crew on how to "unsuccessfully" implement orders from the assistant chief (stupid person) so that nobody got hurt AND the assistant chief couldn't discipline the men for failing/refusing to obey orders.
mikewint
Captain
On another note there are the incredibly stupid things that very smart people do. The recent outbreak of measles in the US can be traced back to essentially to one man, very smart and unfortunately very greedy as well.
In 1998, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, well-known medical researcher in the UK, published an article in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet. In the published paper Wakefield claimed that he had discovered a link between autism and the Measles Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine. This paper along with the "Green our Vaccines" movement gave birth to the Antivaxxer movement.
An investigative reporter in the UK, Brian Deer, discovered that Wakefield's paper was a complete fraud. He had faked his patients' medical histories and published the results of his fraudulent study all in the name of money. Wakefield had received $674,000 from lawyers who were hoping to sue vaccine companies. In order to get the results that the lawyers wanted, Wakefield faked his data: He chose patients in his 12-person study who already had signs of autism and lied about others developing autism after getting the MMR vaccine.
By 2004, 10 of his fellow researchers found out about the law firm backing the research and withdrew their names as study co-authors. The Lancet initially defended the paper but mounting evidence of Wakefields fraud caused them (Lancet) to retract the paper in 2010 and eventually Wakefield was stripped of his medical license.
Despite all the evidence, Wakefield and some of his fellow scientists continue to defend the study, saying that there was a scheme to cover up the link between vaccines and autism, but no peer-reviewed study has been able to replicate Wakefield's results.
That faked paper from the '90s is having very real and serious public health effects to this day. Some parents -- fearing for their children's safety -- are still opting not to get the MMR vaccine. This drop in vaccination rates has fueled a spike in measles cases across the US. From January 1 to May 3, 2019, 764 individual cases of measles have been confirmed in 23 states. This is an increase of 60 cases from the previous week. This is the greatest number of cases reported in the U.S. since 1994 and since measles was declared eliminated in 2000 when not a single case was transmitted by patients in the US. The CDC reports that there have been 11 measles deaths since 2000 and at least 8 measles deaths since 2005. The last death, a woman in Clallam County in Washington, was exposed in an outbreak of mostly unvaccinated people in 2015.
In 1998, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, well-known medical researcher in the UK, published an article in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet. In the published paper Wakefield claimed that he had discovered a link between autism and the Measles Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine. This paper along with the "Green our Vaccines" movement gave birth to the Antivaxxer movement.
An investigative reporter in the UK, Brian Deer, discovered that Wakefield's paper was a complete fraud. He had faked his patients' medical histories and published the results of his fraudulent study all in the name of money. Wakefield had received $674,000 from lawyers who were hoping to sue vaccine companies. In order to get the results that the lawyers wanted, Wakefield faked his data: He chose patients in his 12-person study who already had signs of autism and lied about others developing autism after getting the MMR vaccine.
By 2004, 10 of his fellow researchers found out about the law firm backing the research and withdrew their names as study co-authors. The Lancet initially defended the paper but mounting evidence of Wakefields fraud caused them (Lancet) to retract the paper in 2010 and eventually Wakefield was stripped of his medical license.
Despite all the evidence, Wakefield and some of his fellow scientists continue to defend the study, saying that there was a scheme to cover up the link between vaccines and autism, but no peer-reviewed study has been able to replicate Wakefield's results.
That faked paper from the '90s is having very real and serious public health effects to this day. Some parents -- fearing for their children's safety -- are still opting not to get the MMR vaccine. This drop in vaccination rates has fueled a spike in measles cases across the US. From January 1 to May 3, 2019, 764 individual cases of measles have been confirmed in 23 states. This is an increase of 60 cases from the previous week. This is the greatest number of cases reported in the U.S. since 1994 and since measles was declared eliminated in 2000 when not a single case was transmitted by patients in the US. The CDC reports that there have been 11 measles deaths since 2000 and at least 8 measles deaths since 2005. The last death, a woman in Clallam County in Washington, was exposed in an outbreak of mostly unvaccinated people in 2015.
Greg Boeser
1st Sergeant
I know a few anti-vaxxers. Sometimes I think their justification of their position stems from just plain laziness. Kind of like the idiots pushing the "green" agenda, "If we could just go back to a time before the industrial revolution, then everything would be perfect." But a pre-industrial utopia with all the modern conveniences, you know, 'cause everything will run by magic.
special ed
1st Sergeant
- 4,847
- May 13, 2018
About 35-40 years ago there was a number of bumper stickers claiming " End pollution, get a horse". I would put a card on their window " Imagine the pollution if every car was a team of horses" Modern people have not read of the health problems in cities as late as the 1920s from horse manure especially in the south in summer with no air conditioning.
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
Circa 1920 Scientific American published an article praising the immense improvement in city public health due to the adoption of the motorcar.
mikewint
Captain
Ah yes horse poopy and remember, they pee too. As cities became larger more and more horses were needed to move people and freight around the city. One solution to limiting the number of urban horses was the Horsecar, basically a trolly pulled by a team of horses. My grandfather drove a horsecar for the CTA in Chicago. Horsecars allowed two animals to pull a car with up to 20 people rather than one horse per person. Operating in two-horse, four-hour shifts, eight animals were needed per vehicle per day. But city populations continued to grow requiring more and more horses. By the 1870s in New York, for example, over 100 million horsecar trips per year were occurring and by 1880 there were at least 150,000 horses in the city. Some of these provided transportation for people while others served to move freight from trains into and around the growing metropolis. For the most part these were large draft horses producing about 22 pounds of manure per horse per day. That comes to about 1650 TONS of equine manure each day and over 100,000 tons per year (not to mention around 10 million gallons of urine).
Diary entries made at the time record that the streets were "literally carpeted with a warm, brown matting . . . smelling to heaven." So-called "crossing sweepers" would offer their services to pedestrians, clearing out paths for walking, but when it rained, the streets turned to muck and rivers of manure. And when it was dry, wind whipped up a manure dust which was carried over the entire city. Sanitary inspector James Little M.D., recorded that there was a pork-packing building at 39th Street where "blood and liquid offal flows the distance of two blocks before it empties into the river," Little wrote. "This, during the summer weather, undergoes decomposition, which gives rise to a very offensive odor, and certainly must exert a very injurious effect upon the health of those living in the vicinity." The city was alive with "gutters running with blood and filth, and the constant passage of offal and dead animals to the offal-dock," the good doctor continued. "And scattered through the midst of these nuisances, which are constantly contaminating the atmosphere with their noxious exhalations, and surrounding them on all sides, are the crowded and ill-ventilated tenant-houses where 100 tenants or so share one or two outhouses. Cases of fever are constantly occurring in this neighborhood, and cholera infantum and dysentery are by no means strangers to this vicinity."
For a time, the economics of excrement as fertilizer helped keep streets clean, but as more supply stacked up the incentive to clear it started to dwindle and smelly piles began to build up in empty lots. All this accumulated manure and the remains of dead horses (horses are BIG and difficult to transport and bury so dead horses were often simply abandoned in the streets where they had fallen) littered the streets and provided a breeding ground for billions of flies a day. These, in turn, spread diseases, elevating the problem from a nuisance to a public health crisis. In 1880 New York City removed fifteen thousand dead horses from its streets, and as late as 1912 Chicago carted away nearly ten thousand horse carcasses.
Now obviously what comes out of a horse first has to go in. Each horse needed over three tons of oats and hay per year, which had to be planted and harvested (by horses), that required tens of millions of acres of rural land just to supply food for all the horses AND all that food had to be transported to the city by horses
It was a dilemma with no easy solution; horses were just too essential to transportation and shipping. By the early 1900s, a solution??? seemed to be appearing: electric streetcars and internal combustion vehicles were beginning to appear and gaining acceptance. In addition rising land pricing (for stables and farmland) coupled with higher food costs increasingly made these new options more economical, too.
Eventually the rise of private cars put the final nail in the horse-drawn coffin. By 1912, cars outnumbered horses on the streets of NYC and by 1917 the last horsecar was put out of commission and the issue of horse droppings slowly disappeared into history.
Technology is truly a wonderful thing and it solved the manure problem BUT that overlooks the fact that cleanup and cars were not truly solutions to the fundamental issue of urban pollution — they simply shifted the disposition of and type of dangerous waste. The pollutants released by the internal-combustion engine irritate people's eyes and lungs, weakening their resistance to disease and worsening already present health problems. The immense number of automobiles in cities today has produced environmental difficulties that will in time generate problems that will dwarf those produced by horses.
special ed
1st Sergeant
- 4,847
- May 13, 2018
A long standing old joke told to new residents of New Orleans is about the times when horses fell dead in the streets, a police report was required. When a officer was called to Tchoupitoulas street for a dead horse, he had spectators drag the horse one block to Camp street because he couldn't spell Tchoupitoulas.
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
I understand that in our neighborhood we have a woman who rides her horse on the sidewalk and then gets very upset if you ask her to clean up the poop it left in front of your house.
mikewint
Captain
You know that not only do horsies poop so do people!! In 1880 the population of New York City was over 1.9 million and by 1890 over 2.6 million. That's a LOT of human manure to deal with in an era of outdoor "facilities". Until the late nineteenth century, most city dwellers relied solely on outhouses located in backyards and alleys. While some residents had their own private outhouses, anyone living in a tenement would have shared facilities with their neighbors. The outhouse/resident ratio varied, but most tenements had just three to four outhouses, and it was not uncommon to find over 100 people living in a single tenement building. This meant that people often shared a single outhouse with anywhere from 25 to 30 of their neighbors, making for long line-ups and limited privacy. Add to that, the fact that most tenement outhouses were also teeming with rats and other vermin and were a major sources of disease. At night, especially in the dead of winter, running down several flights of stairs to street level posed additional dangers. Thus most city residents turned to their chamber pots. These chamber pots were typically stored under beds. Since most tenements had little or no ventilation, the stench from a hundred or so filled chamber pots quickly become unbearable. To help control the stench, chamber pots had to be emptied into backyard outhouses on a regular basis. Imagine carrying pots full of human waste through the dark and narrow halls of a tenement on a daily basis.
In the countryside, outhouses were usually temporary structures built over a hole in the ground. As the holes filled up, the outhouses were simply moved to a new location and the holes covered over with fresh soil. In urban areas, limited space meant that most outhouses were permanent structures. As the holes filled with human waste it had to be physically removed. Removing human waste from urban outhouses was a thriving business in the nineteenth-century.
At the time, human waste was euphemistically known as "night soil" probably because the night soil cart men made their living largely after dark. Their job involved shoveling waste from the city's outhouses into carts (sometimes other garbage and animal carcasses would also be collected) and then disposing of the contents usually in empty lots located throughout the city. If the city had nearby waterways most of the city's night soil would be dumped directly into the waterway. For seaboard cities like New York, the night soil was placed on steamboats and dumped far out in the harbor or simply dumped off the side of piers since dumping night soil into local waterways was far less expensive than using steamboats to cart the waste out into the harbor.
The first patent for a flushing lavatory was issued in 1775 to Scottish inventor Alexander Cumming. Amazingly indoor toilets did not become the norm in most cities until the late nineteenth century and did not reach many rural areas until decades later. Within the cities there were two major obstacles to overcome.
First, there was the problem of creating a sewage system in an already developed urban area. Laying sewage pipes under an already existing urban area proved to be a difficult, costly and at times politically contentious endeavor.
Secondly there was an, at-the-time, broadly accepted theory about sewer gases. Given the health concerns and unpleasant smells associated with outhouses many residents initially viewed the bringing of the outhouse in-house to be a bringing a potentially deadly conduit of disease and dangerous gases rising up from the city's sewers directly into their home. In the nineteenth century, many physicians and the general public believed that if inhaled, the gases could lead to severe illness and even death.
It was not until the turn of the 20th century that most people in the medical profession agreed that sewer gases were not a source of disease and that on the contrary, continuing to deny city residents access to indoor toilets was contributing to the spread of deadly diseases. With this realization, the push to install indoor toilets and running water across urban areas intensified. In New York the Tenement Act of 1901 clearly states, "In every tenement house here after erected there shall be a separate water-closet in a separate compartment within each apartment." Although new tenement construction had to comply and nearly all buildings erected after 1910 were built with indoor toilets, many existing tenement owners were slow to come into line with the new regulations. In 1937, in New York, an estimated 165,000 families were still living in tenements without access to private indoor toilets.
Today, indoor plumbing is the norm and very few urbanites do not have access to an indoor toilet. These indoor "facilities" have created some very special "Night Soil" men. The New York Post recently reported that Vincenzo Giurbino, an NYC Housing Authority "toilet tech," made an impressive $228,633 in overtime during the last fiscal year. Vincenzo had spent up to 70 hours per week unclogging NYC Housing Authority toilets. In the process taking home over $375,000 per year—this tops the mayor's annual take-home salary by more than $100,000.
In the countryside, outhouses were usually temporary structures built over a hole in the ground. As the holes filled up, the outhouses were simply moved to a new location and the holes covered over with fresh soil. In urban areas, limited space meant that most outhouses were permanent structures. As the holes filled with human waste it had to be physically removed. Removing human waste from urban outhouses was a thriving business in the nineteenth-century.
At the time, human waste was euphemistically known as "night soil" probably because the night soil cart men made their living largely after dark. Their job involved shoveling waste from the city's outhouses into carts (sometimes other garbage and animal carcasses would also be collected) and then disposing of the contents usually in empty lots located throughout the city. If the city had nearby waterways most of the city's night soil would be dumped directly into the waterway. For seaboard cities like New York, the night soil was placed on steamboats and dumped far out in the harbor or simply dumped off the side of piers since dumping night soil into local waterways was far less expensive than using steamboats to cart the waste out into the harbor.
The first patent for a flushing lavatory was issued in 1775 to Scottish inventor Alexander Cumming. Amazingly indoor toilets did not become the norm in most cities until the late nineteenth century and did not reach many rural areas until decades later. Within the cities there were two major obstacles to overcome.
First, there was the problem of creating a sewage system in an already developed urban area. Laying sewage pipes under an already existing urban area proved to be a difficult, costly and at times politically contentious endeavor.
Secondly there was an, at-the-time, broadly accepted theory about sewer gases. Given the health concerns and unpleasant smells associated with outhouses many residents initially viewed the bringing of the outhouse in-house to be a bringing a potentially deadly conduit of disease and dangerous gases rising up from the city's sewers directly into their home. In the nineteenth century, many physicians and the general public believed that if inhaled, the gases could lead to severe illness and even death.
It was not until the turn of the 20th century that most people in the medical profession agreed that sewer gases were not a source of disease and that on the contrary, continuing to deny city residents access to indoor toilets was contributing to the spread of deadly diseases. With this realization, the push to install indoor toilets and running water across urban areas intensified. In New York the Tenement Act of 1901 clearly states, "In every tenement house here after erected there shall be a separate water-closet in a separate compartment within each apartment." Although new tenement construction had to comply and nearly all buildings erected after 1910 were built with indoor toilets, many existing tenement owners were slow to come into line with the new regulations. In 1937, in New York, an estimated 165,000 families were still living in tenements without access to private indoor toilets.
Today, indoor plumbing is the norm and very few urbanites do not have access to an indoor toilet. These indoor "facilities" have created some very special "Night Soil" men. The New York Post recently reported that Vincenzo Giurbino, an NYC Housing Authority "toilet tech," made an impressive $228,633 in overtime during the last fiscal year. Vincenzo had spent up to 70 hours per week unclogging NYC Housing Authority toilets. In the process taking home over $375,000 per year—this tops the mayor's annual take-home salary by more than $100,000.
- Thread starter
- #73
fubar57
General
You weren't even trying on this one Mike; your lowest number yet...
N4521U
Colonel
Sh!t!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
michael rauls
Tech Sergeant
- 1,679
- Jul 15, 2016
I posted this before on another thread so my apologies to those who have already seen it but since this thread started with a news headline and I figure many haven't seen it I'll give it another shot.
Guess it was about a year ago I was reading one of the financial sites I frequent and ran across this headline" central bank of Vietnam pledges to maintain a firm dong" .......... ...( the dong is the currency of Vietnam for those unfamiliar with it. )
Guess it was about a year ago I was reading one of the financial sites I frequent and ran across this headline" central bank of Vietnam pledges to maintain a firm dong" .......... ...( the dong is the currency of Vietnam for those unfamiliar with it. )
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Sooo...what you're saying is, if you happen to be in Vietnam, it would not be unusual to see a person holding thier Dong in a public place? 
- Thread starter
- #78
fubar57
General
N4521U
Colonel
Bacon!
Bwahahahahahaha
Bwahahahahahaha
mikewint
Captain
Not common but not unusual either since bathrooms in most shops/bars were outside in the open alley generally with a grab-bar to hold onto, zero privacy no HE and SHE divisions. Poop was very quickly collected by the "Honey-pot" men who each had a jealously guarded territory. Collected poop was taken to their barge where it was dumped. The entire family lived on the barge right over the poop. Children had a hot rod poked up their nose to kill their sense of smell. When full the barge was poled down river where the poop was sold to farmers for fertilizer. A rice paddy on a hot humid day had to be smelled to be believed. Because of the rich foods and amounts we ate, American poop was highly prized. A soldier outside a bar, pants down, attempting to deliver quickly drew a crowd of onlookers and a round of applause upon delivery. Businesses on the Saigon river did have private bathrooms but the facilities merely consisted of a hole in the floor over the river. Feet away from children playing in the water and women washing clothes.
American garbage dumps were even worse and had to be guarded day and night to prevent mob fights over the garbage. Garbage trucks had to be escorted into the dump to prevent them from being mobbed before they could dump
