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USPS Irradiation Damages Electronics
meehawl writes: "Bummer. Turns out the USPS's new Electron Beams anthrax zappers can erase and sometimes permanently damage CompactFlash cards. I wonder what other sensitive electronics will get wiped, not to mention seeds, film, some plastics, and so on. I guess it's more reason to use Fedex and UPS, at least unless and until they deploy these beam weapons as well. All this disruption for a campaign that killed five people? Some people think using the beams will lead to more deaths and injuries among operators. Meanwhile, electron beam makers, SureBeam, just got an analyst upgrade." Err, and be careful what you irradiate.
Oh I love this argument. The "value" of a single human life... how "noble" of you to feel that way.
...because we happen to be alive! You don't hear dead people commenting on the sanctity of life do you?
First of all, we still don't know why we are here. Don't get religious on me now. We can't and don't really know anything about ourselves, just that we are typically afraid to die. That's all. Nothing more.
Who was it commenting on the "Sanctity of Life." Some comedian guy. More of a standup philosopher than a comedian. Well, I happen to agree with him on that issue. The ideal of the sanctity of life is all skewed.
Finally, and more seriously, if we valued human life, we wouldn't smoke. We wouldn't drink and drive. We wouldn't drive for that matter. The notion here is "acceptable risk."
Again, the motivation for all this "protecting human life" crap isn't about protecting lives as much as it is about protecting asses. They want to avoid being sued.
So get off your high horse and have a look at reality. We do not value life as much as you might think. We value the lives of foreign and faceless people even less. More people die on the freeways than did in the WTC. Okay, maybe not all at once but still!
And besides that, we die anyway. Nothing can stop that from happening.
...oh it's too early in the morning for this...
I don't even have to repeat the quote from the title, you all know what it is. It is tasteless, uncaring, and selfish in a disturbing way.
It is even further disturbing to see the discussions about it here... how everyone who argues against such emotion gets even more selfish, uncaring responses, and how some people are relating this to deaths from drunk driving or careless eating.
This is a PUBLIC HEALTH SAFETY MATTER. French fries don't kill you the same way anthrax does. Drunk driving is a result of irresponsible behavior and is not tolerated much at all in this country, and our society has gone to great lengths to prevent needless deaths from auto accidents in general... why could we not apply this to eliminating anthrax and other biological threats from our postal mail system?
Because you want to send a compact flash card unwrapped in a 34 cent envelope? Shame on you.
But it's not even that. It's that you think that your needs for freedom and convienience are more powerful and weighty than the public's need for safety and security. And on top of that, you implicitly and coldheartedly suggest that if those 5 people hadn't died yet, but they would if they stopped irradiation, you'd still consider stopping it because you don't want to risk damaging improperly marked electronic equipment.
It's not all of you. Some of you are actually appalled by this, as am I. But the rest of you... that's just sick. And, sadly, this kind of stuff happens all the time on here. And it's Michael who usually posts it, too. He does a poor job of weeding out such bad taste from what might be an interesting discussion. Rather than say "All because 5 people died...", we could ask "How can we eliminate the public health threat AND ensure the safety of our equipment?" The fact that it isn't appalling to you to say the former is appalling to the people among us who value human life, no matter how sick and fucked up it can be at times.
Ah, who's listening to me anyway? Go back to your coffee, games, and coding.