http://blogs.parkplatz.net/steve/2009/07/21/1248136380000.html Suppose a new form of transport has just become widely popular. It allowed people to travel very quickly on pre-prepared trackways to almost anywhere they wanted within a country. The problem is that it isn't quite safe, and between hundreds and thousands ... en Steve Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:59:43 GMT Pebble (http://pebble.sourceforge.net) http://backend.userland.com/rss http://blogs.parkplatz.net/steve/2009/07/21/1248136380000.html#comment1248163183532 This is a very modern phenomenon. To use your example, the roads are statistically much safer than they were even twenty years ago. Pretty soon after cars appeared, they started killing people in large numbers. Few seemed to mind at the time.<br /> <br /> It's quite shocking to the modern mind to hear that the engineers of the Hoover Dam actually calculated how many people would be killed during its building (they came in &quot;below budget&quot;). A certain number were expendable. The Apollo projects hoped not to lose any astronauts, but they still sent them into space in insane pieces of junk that no rational person would travel down the road in.<br /> <br /> The reaction to swine flu is just one symptom of an assumed set of priorities which is, in the end, perverse. It is the absence of reaction to conventional flu (or the driving of cars) that is out of step with modern thinking. Elephant http://blogs.parkplatz.net/steve/2009/07/21/1248136380000.html#comments http://blogs.parkplatz.net/steve/2009/07/21/1248136380000.html#comment1248163183532 Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:59:43 GMT