Hard News: Where nature may win
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Just listening to the senior cop read the names and ages of all the men trapped in the mine. That's hard.
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I found it quite hard to read the Herald report on the two guys who got out earlier today.
[The thread appears twice in System for some reason.]
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What I don't understand is why the media is constantly used the word "trapped" when referring to the miners. I would have thought that "missing" would be a much better word to avoid generating unwarranted hope.
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You can almost feel the palpable impatience amongst the population, urging rescue teams into the tunnel. In wake of the Chilean rescue and the continuous glare of media attention, we want the story to develop--or can't help thinking the worse?
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3410,
[The thread appears twice in System for some reason.]
In fact, there actually are two threads.
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Something like this, that shows the dangers of mining, is more likely to have an effect on future mines than anything the Greens can wheel out
It is a dangerous business -
It is hard, unimagineable for the families involved, let alone the miners themselves. And yes, it looks bleak.
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For comparison
This is the result of a chinese coal mine explosion, 37 dead.
The chinese mines are inherently more dangerous but coal mines are bad places to be when an explosion occurs.
Although China’s mine safety has improved from the low point of 2002, when 7,000 deaths were recorded, the death toll has begun to tick up again and reached 2,600 last year.
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[The thread appears twice in System for some reason.]
In fact, there actually are two threads.
Indeed, there are. We're looking into it right now.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I would have thought that "missing" would be a much better word to avoid generating unwarranted hope.
FFS, they're not missing. I think we've got a reasonable idea where they are, they're trapped. Perhaps the real issue here is a great deal of wild surmise that is spectacularly useless.
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And heavens forfend I quote CSI: Miami, but there was a lovely line in last night's episode when David 'Eloquent Sunglasses of Righteousness' Caruso gave a soundbite to the media pack:
"Do your job responsibly, so I can do mine."
YMMV as to whether the Pike Creek gore crows have been anything near responsible.
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Perhaps the real issue here is a great deal of wild surmise that is spectacularly useless.
Just watched the press briefing. Man, foreign journalists are much more aggressive than the locals. And the police and everyone else are getting palpably tired of batting away speculative statements framed as questions.
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One News took the live cross to new heights of pointlessness
On the first night one of the channels crossed live to Christchurch, umpteen hundred kilometres away. I'm not sure how the reporter in Chch standing in front of something completely irrelevant knew more than the newsreader in Auckland, but there you have it.
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And the police and everyone else are getting palpably tired of batting away speculative statements framed as questions.
I've got to say there's more than a few people whose self-control has been downright legendary. I'd have snapped "why don't you fuck off and do something useful, you parasites" a loooong time ago.
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I had the misfortune of seeing some of Sunday morning's presser, and was rather infuriated by the inanity of the questions. Asking Knowles, who has made it very clear that he's running this one strictly by the numbers, what his gut feel was about when a rescue would take place.
I'm also getting irritated (trying to avoid a Craig-like burst of profanity that must be redacted) by the implications that the rescuers are a bunch of sissies. That they should be charging in because, damnit, there are men trapped in there! Cue slow-mo of clusters of ruggedly-handsome men, festooned with BA cylinders and other paraphernalia, pickaxes over one shoulder, chiselled jaws set firmly, striding purposefully toward the mine entrance. That's how it happens, right?
I've said it before, "Emergency services personnel have it drummed into them again, and again, and again, ad nauseum, that they’re zero use to anyone if they get themselves seriously injured or killed." This will be forefront in the mind of Supt. Knowles as he directs this operation: the people in there are in there. The people out here are out here. If it goes wrong, and the men (and they are all men. Mines rescue is not much of an equal-opportunities game) who're out here today end up trapped in there tomorrow, that's more people who need rescuing (or, heaven forfend, burying) to no purpose in getting out the guys who're already in there. I'd certainly love to know what's going through Knowles' mind when he hears this shit, and he's doing an admirable job of not strangling some of the twatcocks who're pretending to be journalists.ETA: Craig, zing on "heaven forfend". Hive mind much?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
(trying to avoid a Craig-like burst of profanity that must be redacted)
Hey, I do it so you don't have to. :) And you're right -- very easy to be be brave with other people's lives when you're sitting behind a keyboard (or in an air conditioned newsroom/studio hundreds of miles away) but feeding the media beast cannot be the prime concern here.
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Moving away from the keyboard to try and resist 140-character flame job on Twitter moron who thinks he knows more than “that berk Knowles”. For. Fuck’s. Sake.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Moving away from the keyboard to try and resist 140-character flame job on Twitter moron who thinks he knows more than “that berk Knowles”.
If anything, I’d say Knowles has been a case study, from a PR point of view, in how to front situations like this – his demeanour and language has always been impeccable, he’s done a good job in quickly hosing down misinformation and unwarranted speculation while not adding to it and (as I said) he’s sure done a better job of not losing his shit that I could.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Oh go on, it'll be good for your blood pressure. And I want to know just how eloquently one can flame that kind of drop-kick in 140 characters *smiles innocently*
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
I hope TPTB are watching Knowles, because he’s precisely the kind of person who I would want to see in one of the roles with Commissioner in the title. NZ Police (and the entire NZ establishment, by extension) could not ask for a better public face for this incident.
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Brent Jackson, in reply to
FFS, they’re not missing.
I think you'll find that they did not return to the surface at the end of their shift, which (to me) makes them "missing". "Trapped" implies to me that they are alive, and known to be alive. As far as I can ascertain there have not been any reports of a blockage in the mine, only a power failure, an explosion, and poisonous gases. Until now the poisonous gases have made it too dangerous to send in a rescue team.
Oh how I wish that it would be possible to have some form of media that could act as an information service, rather than the entertainment industry that we have at present.
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3410,
NZ Police (and the entire NZ establishment, by extension) could not ask for a better public face for this incident.
I wouldn't exactly call him cool-headed.
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As far as I can ascertain there have not been any reports of a blockage in the mine, only a power failure, an explosion, and poisonous gases.
That was the upsetting thing about reading the account of the two survivors in today’s Herald. It made the strong implication that only by coming out when they did you could survive.
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Cue slow-mo of clusters of ruggedly-handsome men, festooned with BA cylinders and other paraphernalia, pickaxes over one shoulder, chiselled jaws set firmly, striding purposefully toward the mine entrance. That’s how it happens, right?
No wait, I've seen that movie! (particularly the bit where he has to enter via some massive ventilation fans that can only be slowed down for a minute because the storywriters couldn't think of a good excuse).
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Robyn Gallagher, in reply to
"Missing" implies that they might have wandered off down the road to the pub and just not told anyone. "Trapped" is more specific. And, sadly, bodies can be trapped too :-(
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