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Emergency Gadgets Reviewed
Carl Bialik writes "When power lines go down, hand-cranked radios and standalone cellphone chargers could come in handy. Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg reviews emergency gadgets, including a $50 radio that picks up TV audio and gets 35 minutes of power from a 30-second crank. Of course, Mossberg also offers the caveat that these gadgets could be rendered useless 'should the communications infrastructure itself go down.'"
The $50 radio that picks up TV audio will be useless when the mandatory switch to digital OTA broadcasts occurs. (Unless something interesting will be broadcast on those frequencies after that point.)
If you're charging your iPod you aren't having a fucking emergency.
A radio could be quite useful, but not nearly as useful as a couple of cases of bottled water.
-Peter
A hand-cranked device that could produce 3-5 days of food and water would probably be popular.
While there may be value to hearing whats going on in an emergency, I'd be able to actually call for help should I need it.
A technicians-class FCC license is very easy to get, and small handheld tranceivers are not very expensive.
Thats MUCH more useful in an emergency than a TV. I can hear the weater broadcasts, radio, and emergency bands and much more usefully, I can actually transmit.
In short, it never ceases to amaze me how humanity devolves during disasters and make a bad situation even worse.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
They review two crank radios and then extra battery cells for your cell phone and iPod? How 'bout an actual review of several hand crank radios. At the local Radio Shack they had three different ones, as does Sharper Image and other stores. Just because it says "Wall Street Journal" doesn't mean its useful.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
But it doesn't matter. Police, firemen and similar people are generally trained to take care of #1 first, not to be a hero. (Now, many people do disregard this and do dangerous things, but they're usually disciplined afterwards, assuming they live.)
If you've got two police officers in a car, and you see a very angry mob beating somebody, intervening immediately is not usually the smartest thing to do. You'd be putting yourself into extreme danger, and may in fact make things worse for the person being beaten.
A much smarter response would be to stay back and call it in and get lots of reinforcements, cops in riot gear, and THEN you can go in. When you're ready, not before. If you're going to enter a battle, make sure it's a battle you're likely to win. If you're not planning to win, don't enter.
Individuals respect cop's authority. Even large crowds generally respect police. But an angry mob? No way would two smart cops do anything about that on their own beyond getting reenforcements.
Private citizens were stripped of their ability to protect themselves by the very people who admitted they were unable to protect anyone. And since it's been very popular to blame racism for everything else that's gone poorly in NOLA, it appears that the local government doesn't think poor black folk can be trusted with guns.
The devolution and degradation of humanity happened long before the riots. It started several hundred years ago when the first slave was taken to America. That's not an excuse for the violence that was inflicted on Reginald Denny, but we should look in the mirror at our own savage behavior, that happens every day when we ignore poverty in our own country, before pointing at the relatively brief amount of "savage" behavior that happens during riots. Quite a bit of their anger is righteous.
There are still pockets of slavery in the South today and the racist tradition is alive and well. Sure, technically they're free, but poverty and social roles still enforces behavior that is very similar in functionality to slavery. My Mom was raised by a black woman. I met her a few times, and she still lives on property owned by my Mom's family (as far as I know, I try not to think of the situation). When I was growing up, my mom referred to her as grandma any time she would speak of her. She was paid a weekly stipend and lived in servant's quarters. My grandparents weren't rich, certainly not well-off enough to pay someone a decent wage. But, this type of arrangement was common, because after slavery was abolished, many black people fell into familiar roles of servant and laborer, and never managed to climb out of them. She is still alive, and while technically free, the woman has never owned anything of any significance in her entire life. I grew up in Missouri (my mom's family lives in Georgia), far enough away from the south to gain perspective on how strange the situation was, and only met her twice (my Mom was estranged from her family a large part of my childhood), but I can't help but think that this strange situation is a common thing. When she talks to anyone white, she calls them Mr. or Ms., to this day. I saw her 3 years ago at my grandfather's funeral, and I was 28, and she was around 90, and she referred to me as Mr. Jon! What year are we in?
So, it's pretty easy (for me) to understand the anger that black people feel, in light of the fact that there are still some who are living the life of modern day slaves. Note that this isn't the kind of legacy that people talk about, and I would like to believe that only having visited my Mom's family in GA twice in my 31 years absolves me of responsibility, but does it? How exactly do I pay her for what she has lost, 90 years of lost opportunity?
This is part of the problem, is that racism is an embarrassing legacy for whites, so it often is not talked about. This is the first time I've written about this part of my family legacy, and I hesitated, even though I am pseudo-anonymous, but stories like these need to be told more often, so that people understand what is really going on. It's similar to the story of the teenage girl that is raped and has an abortion. As compelling of a case as it makes for abortion, the story is not told, often because people are embarrassed and ashamed. So, the injustice remains hidden.