Copper theft is deadly

Sure is..not only was he a "good boy", but he was terminally stupid.

Gunner

"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."

- Proverbs 22:3

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gunner

"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."

- Proverbs 22:3

Always did what he was told?

Mark Rand RTFM

You forget, iggy - *IDIOTS ABOUND*

I'd be willing to bet that if you could ask them, the ones that have fried themselves this way would tell you that they had *NO CLUE WHATSOEVER* that those big wires on top of the tall poles were anything more than "regular" 110 like you get out of a wall socket - just hurts for a second, and by then, I'll have it knocked loose and be able to drag it off to the scrapyard", with absolutely no concept of what kind of numbers are involved or how much "hurt" grabbing it is going to cause. "I've been zapped by the wall plugs before - yeah, it sucks, but it doesn't hurt for long, and I'm still standing here, so the same is true for those high-wires, right? And besides - Birds land on 'em all the time, so it can't be *THAT* bad, right? Here, hold my beer and watch this... " Look dear! crispy-fried wire thief...

Perhaps. Perhaps he did it on his own. Shrug..only time and some investigation will maybe determine the truth. Perhaps he thought the line was dead? We had similar cases here in the oil fields over the years, where brass and copper thefts were pretty common. One case was a gent who pulled his van up to a manifold (collection of piping) and started stripping valves off. He got several off, when somewhere downstream..a timer kicked in or perhaps a float switch..and a large pump turned on, nearly instantaneously covering him and the inside of his van with crude oil which had been steam heated to somewhere over 280 degrees. It parboiled him inside of his own skin. Closed casket funeral. A very nasty way to die.

Gunner

"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."

- Proverbs 22:3

An unpleasant thing to contemplate, yes.

Did his "estate" sue the oil company?

i

Iggy, you know and I know how dangerous high voltage lines are, but how would a low-life with no technical knowledge know? He's seen the lines sitting up there all his life and it never occured to him that he'd be fryed in an instant if he touched them.

As Einstein said, "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

======================= Iggy, et al.

IMNSHO there is indeed far more to the story when examined at depth, and what can be extrapolated/projected from it.

The following is my extension of Veblen's insight about the commonality of attitudes and perceptions of the two "leisure classes" in all societies.

Note that these two leisure classes are at the top and bottom of the socio-economic scale. As Veblen insightfully noted, the difference between rich and poor is indeed "money." The difference between the poor and the middle class, and the rich and the middle class is not "money," and in fact there is considerable overlap in economic terms at both ends of the financial spectrum, in that with an income of 12,000$US per year a person could be either a member of the lower class or the middle class, just as a person with an income of 120,000$US could be a member of either the middle or upper class.

This partially explains Gunner's observation that the majority of

9-11 operatives were from very well-to-do Saudi families. Their perceptions and views of the world were thus largely the same as the Saudi fundamentalist poor, with the difference they could afford to [and did] travel to and live in the US for extended periods, send people to flight school, and buy airline tickets (and box cutters).

My observation is that there is a dimension/vector other than "money" in which the rich/poor [leisure classes] differ from the middle class. This is the extent to which they observe/comply with the "rules of society." This is a continuum rather than an either/or condition. Indeed, no one could obey all the rules of society, as many of these are contradictory, leading to so-called "double bind" situations (and some people suggest schizophrenia).

To be sure the precursors for ignoring/disobeying "societies" rules are generally different for the rich and poor. The rich are able to buy their way "out of" or "around" the rules, while the poor, through trial and error, discover that, in general, there are no serious consequences for not obeying. For example, you can slouch in your chair, chew with your mouth open, and fart on the elevator and nothing much happens.

This arises because "societies" rules fall into several categories, such as: (1) Social conventions; (2) Legal requirements, i.e. social conventions backed by the armed force of the state; and (3) Laws of nature, and regulations based on laws of nature.

While hard numbers are difficult to obtain, it appears 90% of American adults tend to cluster at the "Obeys the rules, without too much (or any) thought" end of the scale, 9.9% cluster at the "Rules? What Rules?" end of the scale, while only 0.1% have the expertise and temperament to rationally evaluate the rules and adjust their actions/behaviors according to the current conditions and context. This is greatly complicated in that expertise in one area such as machining, does not automatically provide expertise in other areas such as medical or financial. Indeed, medical doctors are infamous as easy marks for financial "scams."

This is by no means only a theoretical construct, as confusion between "social conventions," and "laws of nature" based rules, combined with lack of expertise in a particular area is frequently fatal. One notable example from the high-end, was the crash of JFK Jr.'s plane, with the loss of three lives, because of his attempt to operate VFR in IFR conditions (in violation of the "rules"). On the other end of the socio-economic spectrum is the "shocking experience" of the copper thief.

The problem, as I see it, is that the habitual rule obeyers are rapidly becoming habitual rule ignorers, possibly because of the huge increase in rules, which can safely be ignored.

In and of itself this is not too much of a problem [but think of DWI @ 100 MPH] but as our leaders and policy makers increasingly shift to the "Rules? What Rules?" end of the spectrum, this has much more profound and serious socio-economic/cultural implications. This is of course paralleled by rapidly increasing numbers at the bottom of the society/economy.

See:

Unka George (George McDuffee) ..................................................................... The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

Denis Diderot (1713-84), French philosopher. Refutation of Helvétius (written 1773-76; first published 1875; repr. in Selected Writings, ed. by Lester G. Crocker, 1966).

I refer to that type of Scumbag, mostly the teenage vandalism and gangs kind, as "Little Darlings".

Because when they do something really bad and get caught, the first thing that happens is the parents and all the relatives come out and say "But my Little Darling would *never* do a thing like that! He's such a Good Boy, Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth! Goes to Church every Sunday and helps little old ladies across the street..."

Some of them say it and actually believe it, and wouldn't say otherwise if you had a three-camera live recording with good sound of the felonies in progress - "You made that up!" "He was FRAMED!"

Other family friends and relatives that end up on TV spouting this line simply repeat the line so they are not disowned (or worse) by the rest of the family, and you can almost see the facial tic as they spit out the words.

The parents who would enforce the shunning think that showing a unified front is in the best interests of the child, but they're only fooling themselves. If the kid really needs to be taken out behind the woodshed and given a whippin' (or locked up in the custody of the County for a few months if whippin' wont work) delaying the inevitable will only make it worse.

"Denial is not a river in Egypt."

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Jim, I agree with you, though it is hard to actually imagine.

i

Unka, great post as always. I agree that there are more dimensions to stratifying society members into "classes". The "educated" vs. "uneducated" classes of people are very different and rarely interact much, even at the same income level (ie a 50,000/y plant worker would rarely spend a lot of time with a 50,000/y professor, and so on, to the extent that they belong to separate social classes).

Regarding rule compliance, you offered a deep insignt on difficulties of compliance with hard to follow rules. I personally have very hard times following the zoning laws, even though they are relatively lax and my town's officials are very sensible people. Some other areas also present contradictions.

I believe that in the big picture, proliferation of hard to follow rules exists so that it would be easier to control people (easier to, say, blackmail them to become government informers, etc).

i

Note though that it is the nature of teenagers to sometimes do "out of character" things. That is, a teenager who participated in burning down of a playground may grow up into a relatively upstanding citizen.

i

Jim Stewart sez: "> Iggy, you know and I know how dangerous high

Consider the criminal escalation effect. Maybe said low-life gleaned a bit of experience, early on, stealing copper and insulators from ordinary open wire telephone lines. In so doing, he amassed a bit of technical knowledge from the fact that he was not injured during that activity. So, armed with a "little knowledge" (truly a dangerous thing) he escalated to the theft of other wires. The moral here is that an unpunished criminal ultimately becomes a greater danger to himself and society.

Bob Swinney

Agreed.

No...here in the rural West..the folks are more pragmatic.

Gunner

"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."

- Proverbs 22:3

He can't have been very smart. The wire he was trying to cut was plastic jacketed aluminum cable with a steel center, used at 7200 volts. Unless he had a smelter to recover the aluminum, he would had worked for about 15 cents an hour to separate the three materials. Any scrap yard he tried to take it to as-is would have known it was stolen.

Who knows? He may have been the one who stole a couple aluminum boxes of cast ballots last election.

============ You may well be right, however I don't think "they" are that smart.

In the last analysis, all governments are organizations that exist to create and enforce "rules" (for the "good" of the citizens). As with anything else, they get better and better at it with practice. This continues until there are so many rules and these are so well enforced that society/economy in which to government is embedded, grinds to a halt. The Soviet Union was only the latest to collapse from the efficiency and extent of its control of its society/economy/culture. Indeed, it is entirely possible for "for profit" corporations to co-ordinate, optimize and manage their way into bankruptcy as evidenced by steel, the airlines, Ford/GMC, and host of others.

As my Father used to tell me "Don't attribute to cunning, spite or malice that which is adequately explained by mere incompetence and ignorance."

Unka George (George McDuffee) ..................................................................... The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

Denis Diderot (1713-84), French philosopher. Refutation of Helvétius (written 1773-76; first published 1875; repr. in Selected Writings, ed. by Lester G. Crocker, 1966).

Nahhhh, more like "Semiconductor". "Dim Bulb" was taken.

I think we need more chlorine in the gene pool...

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