Quote :

"It's a typical overly idealistic liberal approach to things."

I think it's more "idealistic" to run things like it's the wild wild west and hope people play nice.

10/14/2008 9:07:54 AM

So you think the current firearms laws in NC are like they were in the "wild west?" That is an incredibly typical anti comment. The comparison is completely invalid and it shows a lack of understanding concerning the current laws and the laws then.

You do realize that back then no guns were allowed in the city limits of most places right?

[Edited on October 14, 2008 at 9:28 AM. Reason : ]

10/14/2008 9:27:07 AM

Quote :

"If they put it low enough that you couldn't die if you jumped off of the net, then hitting the net from the bridge would kill you."

Not to mention it would get in the way of shipping. But the article mentions 20 feet down.

I appreciate the effort that's been put into justifying the net on this thread - if the numbers work out right, you would be able to do just that. However I find it appalling that Golden Gate Bridge officials haven't actually done the numbers on this - and if they have - that it hasn't been made public.

It could really be very simple - dragging the harbor costs (for example) $1 million: $17 million a year pays for itself in a few years. Instead they try to justify it as a means to save lives. In that case, maybe we should put a $50 million net on every tall public structure.

10/14/2008 9:28:05 AM

Quote :

"In that case, maybe we should put a $50 million net on every tall public structure."

Most famous tall structures have some kind of safety measure in place. As I posted earlier, the Empire State Building in NYC has what they call a suicide barrier (for those who have been there it is metal bars that curve up and inward that you can't really climb). Obviously, it's much, much cheaper to implement that on a relatively small observation deck level than it is over an entire bridge...

Quote :

"Also, if one were to climb up to the top of the two suspension towers the net would do absolutely nothing. It's a typical overly idealistic liberal approach to things. They think that they can protect people from themselves, as if a suicidal person can't find a way around a fucking net or just go somewhere else to kill themselves."

Again, this isn't to deter those who are dead-set (bad choice of words?) on committing suicide no matter what. It's to prevent the impulsive "bridge jumpers" which studies have shown are a moderately sized % of the total suicides from the bridge. It isn't going to stop those who travel across the country solely to off themselves by jumping from a "name" site.

[Edited on October 14, 2008 at 11:25 AM. Reason : x]

10/14/2008 11:16:48 AM

Quote :

"So you think the current firearms laws in NC are like they were in the "wild west?" That is an incredibly typical anti comment. The comparison is completely invalid and it shows a lack of understanding concerning the current laws and the laws then. You do realize that back then no guns were allowed in the city limits of most places right?"

My implication was broader, in fact, but my point is that "idealistic" when applied only to "liberals" doesn't make any sense.

Stop loading your fucking language.

[Edited on October 14, 2008 at 12:42 PM. Reason : .]

10/14/2008 12:41:29 PM

Quote :

"Do you deny that it is cheaper for police to investigate a suicide that happened in someone's house as opposed to the middle of the San Francisco Bay, in which there is a crime scene that spans many miles?"

Again, simply changing how we approach these things would completely decrease the cost. When it's an obvious suicide, then don't bother with it. Don't drag the harbor. Don't fuck with it. If you know who the person was, more than likely you can go to their house and find the suicide note, case closed.

Quote :

"And yes, this net isn't meant to prevent suicides, it is meant to prevent suicides at a specific location. If you can't admit that, then you are completely fucking retarded."

I agree, it's an attempt to prevent suicides at a specific place, and yet, there are so few suicides, it hardly seems worth it. Moreover, investment of money at levels far less than the proposed cost of the net would yield far more dramatic results at decreasing suicide rates city-wide. Certainly that would be a better investment for all involved and might, in the end, save the city more money.

Quote :

"as an aside, the government of New Zealand puts the price of suicides at $2.9 million per."

And I'd say that is an asinine number. If we are blowing 2.9mill investigating something as simple as a suicide, then we are doing something wrong.

10/14/2008 9:05:14 PM

Quote :

"Again, simply changing how we approach these things would completely decrease the cost. When it's an obvious suicide, then don't bother with it. Don't drag the harbor. Don't fuck with it. If you know who the person was, more than likely you can go to their house and find the suicide note, case closed."

Hey guys I'm just gonna shoot from the hip here

10/14/2008 9:56:52 PM

Kind of an intertesting article on GG jumpers:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/13/031013fa_fact?currentPage=1

AHA, funny excerpt:

Quote :

"As Joseph Strauss, the chief engineer of the Golden Gate, watched his beloved suspension bridge rise over San Francisco Bay in the nineteen-thirties, he could not imagine that anyone would use it without due care for its designated purpose. “Who would want to jump from the Golden Gate Bridge?” he told reporters. At the bridge’s opening ceremony, in May of 1937, Strauss read a statement in a low voice, his hands trembling. “What Nature rent asunder long ago man has joined today,” he said. The class poet at Ohio University, class of ’91, Strauss also wrote an ode to mark the occasion: As harps for the winds of heaven, My web-like cables are spun; I offer my span for the traffic of man, At the gate of the setting sun. Three months later, a forty-seven-year-old First World War veteran named Harold Wobber turned to a stranger on the walkway, announced, “This is as far as I go,” and hopped over the rail. His body was never found. The original design called for the rail to be five and a half feet high, but this was lowered to four feet in the final blueprint, for reasons that are lost to history. The bridge’s chief engineer, Mervin Giacomini, who recently retired, told me half seriously that Strauss’s stature—he was only five feet tall—may have been a factor in the decision. Known as “the little man who built the big bridge,” Strauss may simply have wanted to be able to see over its side."

Acutally, I would totally recommend the article to anybody who is a little weird. It is fascinating. In 1973, local newspapers and other media outlets started a countdown leading up to the 500th person to jump, and people competed against bridge officials to be number 500. Some dude tripping on LSD finally slipped through the cracks and got the title. Bizzare. Bizarre?



Anyway, I'm definitely still torn on the issue. Why can't San Fran just start saving for the net on their own? Take up a collection on the bridge? Maybe they should charge for those phones...

[Edited on October 14, 2008 at 10:10 PM. Reason : sss]

10/14/2008 10:00:23 PM

^^ do you have a point? It doesn't take much to tell when someone gets up and climbs over the railing that it's a suicide. Leave it at that.

10/14/2008 10:11:45 PM

Quote :

"A familiar argument against a barrier is that thwarted jumpers will simply go elsewhere. In 1953, a bridge supervisor named Mervin Lewis rejected an early proposal for a barrier by saying it was preferable that suicides jump into the Bay than dive off a building “and maybe kill somebody else.” (It’s a public-safety issue.) Although this belief makes intuitive sense, it is demonstrably untrue. Dr. Seiden’s study, “Where Are They Now?,” published in 1978, followed up on five hundred and fifteen people who were prevented from attempting suicide at the bridge between 1937 and 1971. After, on average, more than twenty-six years, ninety-four per cent of the would-be suicides were either still alive or had died of natural causes. “The findings confirm previous observations that suicidal behavior is crisis-oriented and acute in nature,” Seiden concluded; if you can get a suicidal person through his crisis—Seiden put the high-risk period at ninety days—chances are extremely good that he won’t kill himself later. "

From that same article.

10/14/2008 10:17:56 PM

I can sort of see the argument that this is a means of very impulsive suicide. (i.e. it takes no planning) A person can decide to do this with no preparation, probably at their weakest point.

I do not think the role of the federal government is to keep people from jumping off bridges in California.

10/14/2008 10:20:50 PM

Quote :

"And I'd say that is an asinine number. If we are blowing 2.9mill investigating something as simple as a suicide, then we are doing something wrong."

There is more to the cost of suicide than the investigation. There are economic and non-economic impacts to suicides.

10/14/2008 10:22:14 PM

^^^ I'm not sure that such a study is all that fair, though. To compare someone who is actively prevented by others from committing suicide to someone who is passively prevented from doing so at a specific place is not at all intellectually honest. The circumstances are just far too different. I'd wager that the active prevention had a far greater effect on changing the person's outlook than simply looking down and seeing a net. Thus, while it is true that people who were stopped didn't simply go elsewhere and off themselves, taking such a narrow view completely ignores obvious reasons for the outcome.

^ and those other impacts would be... Your shot-down afore-mentioned bullshit about tourism? And, again, you then neglect to address my point that other measures would decrease suicides city-wide, and thus should be looked at with far greater esteem than simply blowing 50mil on a steel net.

[Edited on October 14, 2008 at 10:30 PM. Reason : ]

10/14/2008 10:28:08 PM

Quote :

"Although this belief makes intuitive sense, it is demonstrably untrue"

That is illogical. The engineer gets it, but the shrink doesn't go figure. Though I don't know if it is the author of the article just not understanding the study. If a net is in place, they will go to a building to jump off of, during the crisis period. If the net is up, then they won't go to the bridge in the first place, but a building or whatever instead. Not 90 days later. Not only that, but the bridge is much more public than the roof of a tall building. So there is a better chance someone will see them on the bridge and try to intervene.

10/14/2008 10:29:05 PM

^People walk over the Bay Bridge in order to jump off the Golden Gate. There's something about the bridge, folks...

(Plus, you can't just walk up to the roof of any tall building. Those doors are locked...because they don't want people jumping or falling off.)



For serious, if you're interested in the topic at all, that article is crazy good.

They already have a "non-physical" program to prevent suicide. Supposedly, they stop a few hundred people a year, but around thirty (recently) slip through. One cop won a medal for talking over 200 jumpers down during his career and never lost a single one.

And to hear the people talk about the suicides that occur on the bridge, it's a love/hate thing. Either way, they definitely don't want no net.

[Edited on October 14, 2008 at 10:35 PM. Reason : sss]

10/14/2008 10:30:48 PM

Quote :

" and those other impacts would be... Your shot-down afore-mentioned bullshit about tourism? And, again, you then neglect to address my point that other measures would decrease suicides city-wide, and thus should be looked at with far greater esteem than simply blowing 50mil on a steel net. "

It works on the same premise as actuarial tables, but I guess you don't know what those are either. Why don't you just read the study yourself then ask retarded questions.

http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/pagesmh/3347?Open

I'm still waiting for you to provide a court case.

[Edited on October 15, 2008 at 9:57 AM. Reason : .]

10/15/2008 9:57:36 AM

what a crock of shit, smackr. Looking at the real cost, it comes out to ~$3800 for all that you have previously mentioned. The only way to get the cost higher is to start pulling out the bullshit like lost wages and taxes, which is entirely irrelevant to the issue of the bridge in the first place, because those items are lost in any suicide, not just ones at the bridge.

Given that my argument is that preventing suicides at the bridge will simply move those suicides elsewhere, then it stands to reason that those costs still exist, even if no suicides occur at the bridge. Thus, you can hardly argue for spending 50million on a project with no perceptible economic benefit, other than the unfortunate scene of a few people dropping from the bridge.

As I have stated before, one could invest far less than 50million in other projects that would decrease suicides city-wide, thus saving all of the money you claim is saved by this pork project. Nice try, though.

10/15/2008 6:19:11 PM

don't argue with me. Argue with the actuarial who come up with those tables to determine this information.

10/15/2008 6:34:14 PM

so then, I see you won't support even your own arguments?

10/15/2008 6:36:16 PM

you are now arguing with the actuarial table. You aren't arguing with me anymore.

10/15/2008 6:37:00 PM

haha. So, I ask you to provide evidence. You do, I call it bullshit and provide ample reason for that, and yet, you ask me to argue with someone else.

Look, you can throw all the "evidence" you want at me, but when it is bullshit, it's bullshit. And, at the end of the day, when you have no evidence, your argument falls flat. Furthermore, in the context of this discussion, me arguing with the figures w/ people from NZ doesn't make sense, anyway. At best, you've provided a figure of $3800 cost to SF per suicide in 2004 NZdollars. Really. $3800NZ. And that is supposed to justify a $50mil project?

10/15/2008 6:40:58 PM

I'm not telling you to argue with someone else. I'm stating that you are no longer arguing with me, you are arguing with the actuarial and authors of the study.

10/15/2008 6:47:59 PM

so, as I said before, you won't support your own argument.

How about this:
If it truly costs almost 3mil per suicide, then wouldn't it make sense to invest money in a project that will decrease suicides city-wide, as opposed to a project that will simply shift the location of those suicides?

10/15/2008 6:50:54 PM

1. I don't write actuarial tables.

2. You are making the assumption that they don't provide services for suicide prevention

3. Building this net doesn't prevent them from doing the other actions.

10/15/2008 6:53:32 PM

hes right

10/15/2008 7:39:26 PM

1. Who gives a fuck about that? It doesn't bloody matter. I looked at the table, and only $3800 is accounted for in the things you state in YOUR ARGUMENT are heavy costs.

2. I'm not making that assumption.

3. Yes, it doesn't prevent the other actions, but it sure as hell isn't giving money towards actions that would be more effective.

10/15/2008 9:15:07 PM

you are still arguing against actuaries.

10/15/2008 11:48:54 PM

no. you are arguing that I'm arguing against actuaries. ADDRESS MY POINTS OR SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.

10/15/2008 11:51:56 PM

I'm not an actuary, so I cannot address your point, if that is you have a point.

10/15/2008 11:55:46 PM

I can type the word actuary too.

10/16/2008 2:51:45 AM

ACTUARY
ACTUARY
ACTUARY
ACTUARY.

hey, i can ignore arguments, too!

10/16/2008 10:28:41 AM

If you were arguing a point I made. instead you are chosing to argue with the figures that I did not come up with.

10/16/2008 10:35:16 AM

whatever, you serial-raping nazi

10/16/2008 10:36:46 AM

insults have to be believable, you herpes infested mongoloid.

10/16/2008 10:38:45 AM