Subsidizing is not the same as subsidence, even though people may use the words interchangeably

This is a long one…you might want to get some popcorn and take a leak. This is my bumbling response to The Ambassador who brought up a very valid point about people who complain about “substandard housing” but offer no solutions. Here’s my analysis, mixed with some opinion and common sense:

The idea of "substandard housing" is broad. I would define a “substandard housing” situation as one that does not meet at least two of the following criteria: economically affordable (meaning, by the government definition, ~30-40% of yearly income), made from materials that are not toxic (asbestos, lead, etc.), not ostracized to the corners of cities and removed from the low-wage jobs the tenants would have, not located in areas adjacent to airports, rail yards, or other areas that these things are usually built in, are not socially stigmatized by people that don’t know any better claiming they are havens of drug abuse or domestic violence, and built according to basic safety codes.

I'm in full agreement with The Ambassador on removing slum lords and their ilk. But we can go further without the government running the housing market. We can leave housing a market commodity but still have substantial improvement. I don't think the government should be running the housing or even building the housing. But...they are already providing housing for middle class and rich Americans (via Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, VA loans, etc...). Why can't they provide money for low-income housing and home-ownership as well?

Just so you know: I'm not an advocate of government solutions. Government is a poor manager of money, efficiency, and time. And I will give no slack to people that are lazy, job the system, or do stupid things and then expect to be bailed out by government so they can then keep doing the same thing. People like that don’t deserve to get benefits because they never put into the pot. But, the majority of people, even the desperately poor, are hard-working and would rather work and be productive than be given hand outs.

Part of the government’s job is to provide funds for things that are 1) not affordable by a single entity (such as the military, space programs, etc.) and 2) are unlikely to be built by private parties because other people will get free use of them (roads, bridges, etc.). This is done by levying taxes on everyone. That way, everyone pays for them and everyone has a stake in them. (I admit this is an idealized situation, but these behaviors are included in many definitions of government).

In no particular order, the more obvious things to improve the situation are:

1) Direct federal funds earmarked ONLY for building affordable housing. By affordable, I mean small apartments for people making poverty level or lower wages that are consistent with my definition of what constitutes “standard housing” above. My definition of the poverty level is, admittedly, not the same as the government’s since the formula is fundamentally flawed. But that's a different story. These buildings would be run as businesses but with the possibility of subsidies during lean periods. If farmers, big oil, airlines, and banks can get subsidies, why not entrepreneurs interested in running apartment complexes for low-income people?

2) Enforce the laws we have now. This includes fair housing laws and basic building codes and safety standards. New laws are pointless unless the ones we have now are given a chance to work.

3) Be more equitable in services coverage. Poor areas tend to have fewer police stations, fire fighters, and emergency health services. This would make many areas that are now considered “substandard” into areas that are not. It’s not always the physical housing. Sometimes it’s just the condition of the neighborhood.

4) Stop spending money on political capital and start working on domestic human capital. Education is key. Good schools and good teachers would go a long way. Educated people are less likely to live in these areas or end up there as a result of low-wage jobs or poor “life choices” in the parlance of our times.

A large part of the problem is related to the more insidious and pervasive things. These also have to change:

1) Racism, ageism, sexism, and all other –isms related to discrimination. These things keep poor people huddled together, racially segregated, and reinforce the social settings that create substandard areas in the first place.

2) Social ostracism of people that live in poverty as well as the jobs they have (house workers, sales clerks, waitresses, etc.). These are not stupid people. They’re not lazy, selfish, or criminals. They are people that didn’t have opportunities we take for granted and often get caught in vicious economic, political, and social battles that are out of their control. These jobs also take a strong physical and mental toll on workers that is not recognized by the public at large.

3) We have to remove greed. CEO’s make millions, secretaries minimum wage. By taking a few less millions and raising the pay of secretaries to more than $7.75 an hour, companies would increase their public image, decrease turnover and absenteeism, and improve the lives of millions. In turn, the workers could afford to move out of decrepit housing and leave them empty to be bulldozed and turned into something more useful.

There’s a pattern above. Most of the solutions to “substandard housing” are not directly related to the physical abode. Most of them are social problems that reinforce bad conditions. We could build (monetarily) “affordable” houses until we’re blue in the face, but if people can’t afford houses because they’re buying food or medical care, or are constantly moving to different jobs, the issue is moot. I see the key factor being our mentality. This has to become a priority. Otherwise, we will spend time, money, and effort on other things. We have to be willing, as citizens, to help fellow citizens. We have to sacrifice a very small amount (relative to our total possessions) to provide much larger benefits to others. This idea of “win-loss” is part of the reason I don’t think we’ll ever solve this problem. People don’t want to help others if they think they will lose something (e.g. money by paying taxes). In the end, if you cut your standard of living by even 1%, you have the potential to increase someone else’s by many multiples of that. Personally, the fact that we are the richest nation in the world and still have tens of millions of citizens who live 4-5 people in a single room and STILL struggle to pay the rent is an outrage.

These are not easy problems to solve. Throwing money at cities and forcing them to build housing has been tried. The preferred solution has mostly been to ignore the problem. Neither has worked. My suggestions are meant to focus on the roots of WHY people are in situations that lead to substandard housing. We need to apply our money strategically. But mostly, we need to make this a community effort. We’re so far behind Europe when it comes to these types of things it makes my skin crawl. This country has done amazing things under pressure and has come together to accomplish them (WWII anyone?). Instead of being an issue of sacrifice, why don’t we make it a noble cause and a reason for American’s to actually be proud of America.

Little voting foo foo hopping through the voting booths

How lame is your party and its platform if you have to go across the aisle and vote for the person you think is easiest to beat from the opposition? To me, all that makes you is 1) a douchebag, 2) insecure in your own beliefs, 3) more interested in winning than in issues and their solutions, 4) not interested in the American ideal of a fair election, and 5) a douchebag.

This article is pretty slanted against Republicans, but the idea goes both ways. The whole point of the primary is for each party to choose who will represent them in the national election and build the platform they will run on. Instead of busying yourself voting for Hillary because you think she’s more beatable than Obama or because you’d rather see her win in November if a Democrat wins, why don’t you take the time to examine your arguments and get ready to tell the voters why we should think the same way. I’ll summarize a few of them here:

1) We are at the beginning of a recession and your current poster boy won’t admit it. The fool doesn’t even know what the price of gas is. You might want to think about how you’ll get the economy moving. And no, lowering taxes is not an option. You can’t spend billions a day on oil, wars, and defense without bringing in an equal amount in revenue.
2) America’s image both abroad and at home is sinking lower than Eliot Spitzer’s hooker. What plan do you have to improve the situation without reverting to “China and Korea are worse than us” rhetoric?
3) Our bridges, roads, water treatment plants, power plants, weather satellites, and other infrastructure are rapidly deteriorating. You might want to decide how to get it back in working order.
4) There are millions of children, minorities, and women living in substandard housing, with substandard schools, and no end to their poverty in sight. Take a minute to figure out what should be done to help them.
5) You’re all about fighting “terrorists”, yet we are pouring resources into Iraq (which study after study has shown led to an INCREASE in terrorist activity) instead of attacking the roots of terrorism- poverty, unemployment, political and religious extremism, etc. How will you defend this to the public?

Don’t think I’m letting the Democrats off either. They do the same shit and it’s just as shameful and retarded. But Democratic aisle jumping appears to be a non-issue in this election since McCain has it wrapped up tighter than a jimmy hat. So I’m not going to hammer it in. Plus, I haven’t heard any of the left-wing Laura Ingrahams spouting this non-sense out loud yet. The Dems have their own issues seeing as they can’t even agree on how to follow their own party’s delegate nomination rules in Florida and Michigan. Anyone that crosses party lines to influence the other party’s nomination is a person that doesn’t trust their party to win on its merits. And that doesn’t say much about you or your party.

Lastly, in case you were wondering, no- this is not the same as vote swapping. We’ll deal with that on The Politicircus.

Republican wet dream

I didn't realize it had been so long since I put something up. Hopefully someone is still checking in on this. Today, let's talk Ann Coulter. This is the woman all of these homophobic, anti-porn, anti-abortion white men go home and beat off to. She's made a career out of wearing little black cocktail dresses, stroking (haha...stroking) the egos of the right, and ruffling feathers on the left. And that's why she's possibly the greatest person in America right now.

Ann Coulter represents everything the rest of us think we stand for when we say we believe in free speech. She's not afraid to say anything and she has no shame. She's apparently the only one willing to even question some of the motives of the 9/11 survivor families. I'm not agreeing with her exactly. She lumps a very diverse group of people under one banner. And she could have been far more tactful. But it's something we were all thinking. She just had the balls to say it.

The next time you hear a democratic politician say they believe in free speech, ask them if that includes Ann Coulter. You won't get a straight yes. You'll get a lot of bullshit about how she's gone too far and doesn't love America. Whether you agree with her or not, you have to defend her right to say it. Otherwise, maybe a I question how much you love America. The best part of the whole situation is that she's busy defending a group of people that are working as hard as they can to take free speech away from her. And if you don't believe that, just take a look at who is responsible for the steep increase in censorship of TV, military blogging, and FOIA requests over the past five years.

Ann is in the entertainment business. She's a stripper dazzling the political right with anti-liberal speech instead of her tits. Although to be fair, she's not working real hard to keep those out of the spotlight either. She's no different than Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, or Sean Hannity. Her job is to sell books and airtime. No one in their right mind takes her seriously. She's not looking to deliver facts or thoughtful commentary. There is no analysis involved in her arguments. She's telling half of the people what they want to hear about the other half. She's intentionally pushing buttons to get a rise out of people and keep her face in the news. And if you really hang on her every word as if they in any way reflect reality, you're just as gullible as she's hoping you are.

Fresh fish!

I’ve been thinking about doing a piece on some of the many reasons the U.S. prison system is messed up, but it appears that someone beat me to it. 1 out of 100 people in this country is in prison. What the fuck? I don’t believe for one second that Americans are more prone to crime than other people. We’re the richest nation on Earth. Why are we filling up our prisons instead of helping these people?

For starters, if you think about it, the idea of prison is kind of stupid. Essentially, you take all of the worst aspects of society- hard core drug use, violence, low self-esteem, poverty, racism, and straight-up ignorance- and put all those into one central location. Many prisoners are people that are already marginalized by society. Now we send them to a place where they can have all those ideas reinforced by being around other people that think and act the same way. And we wonder why prison doesn’t seem to work.

In this country we like to talk about how we believe in rehabilitating criminals. This is utter garbage. Rehabilitation involves intensive care including education, psychological treatment, counseling, personal attention, good role models, and the opportunity to put those treatments into action. The system, as designed and run now, does none of those things. Drug use is rampant in prisons. Guards are combative, fearful, and don’t have time to act like role models. Plus they have guns. Not exactly a friendly relationship. There is no psychological treatment or counseling. Education programs are under-funded or non-existent. In short, there is no rehabilitation. To top it all off, criminals are branded for life when they leave. They don’t get to start over. What they did will follow them until they die. And out in the rest of the world, we’re so paranoid of former inmates that they rarely get a chance to fit back into society. And we wonder why prison doesn’t seem to work.

I’m not saying that prison is all bad. There is a need to keep violent people away from the general public. But we’ve got people locked away for bullshit reasons. Rapists, murderers, multiple-offenders- these are the people that belong in prison. Not people getting 5-10 for drug possession. If we had fewer people in prison, the ones that are there might get the attention and treatment they need and deserve. I know you can’t rehabilitate everyone. But at least you could make an honest effort. More importantly, the “rehabilitation” should begin outside, before prison is even a possibility. Reducing poverty and racism, increasing education and employment opportunities, and getting young kids the help they need before they turn to gangs, guns, and crime would do far more good than waiting until they are already headed down that path.

Prisons would work better if they actually treated criminals equally. The ethnic and racial make-up of prisons does not match the overall population. More minorities end up in prison, even for the same crimes committed by whites. Embezzlement, insider-trading, and other white-collar crimes are treated less harshly and receive less prison time than crimes that are perceived as “minority” driven or more blue-collar - robbery, assault, or battery. You can’t tell me without some decent proof that if 70-aught percent of America is white, we shouldn’t see at least a similar percentage in prisons. I can understand minorities making up a slightly larger proportion in prison because they are more likely to be poor, uneducated, and have fewer opportunities to do something that earns them a decent wage. But when prisons show 80% minority populations, that points to something fucked up about the system that put them there. And we wonder why prison doesn’t work.

In the end, it all comes down to priorities. We have money to fritter on a trillion dollar witch-hunt for “terrorists”, we have money to build arsenals and nukes, we have money to buy statues of dead Americans and useless libraries for every president, but magically have no money to pay for schools, community programs, youth centers, or job training. We’ve got our priorities backward. We’re spending money to protect a perceived “way of life” when we should be spending money to increase our human capital and help our own people with tangible things like a livable income. We have to bring our protection of “America” (whatever that really means) in line with the realities of its citizens. Otherwise, we will continue to be the most incarcerated group of people on the planet. And that doesn’t appear to jive with either freedom or democracy.

You shake me and my confidence, about a great many things

Hooray Blues Traveler. A poignant statement related to today's topic. It seems that Arlen Specter is busy making a jack-ass out of himself again. I watched his appearance a few days ago on Wolf Blitzer in which he said OUT LOUD that the destruction of the illegal New England Patriot's tapes was COMPARABLE TO the destruction of CIA tapes or the destruction of White House emails. That's the kind of stuff you should think to yourself, share a laugh with your buddies, and then go home and put in the file under D for "dumb-ass things to say”.

Arlen just compared (and found more lacking) the ethics of pro-football than our own government. Are you serious? He won’t demand answers of the CIA or the White House, but he will spend thousands upon thousands of tax-payer dollars to have private meetings and possibly government hearings about the NFL. In fact, he's so concerned about the fairness of the NFL that he has suggested he may seek cancellation of the NFL's anti-trust exemption. Whether he does or not isn't really the point. The point is he's already put time and energy into this that would be better spent carrying out the business of the country. We elected him (I didn't - Pennsylvania did) to deal with issues of governance and leadership, not be the football police.

This is a prime example of what government uses for cover to make it look like they’re useful. They’re not really doing anything. They’re not addressing any of the actual problems they were elected to deal with. Those problems are hard and don’t have cheap, fast, easy solutions. The NFL is easy. It’s a single target and everyone can agree that cheating is wrong (whether or not they actually practice that agreement). Steroids in baseball, cheating in football, and the hockey strike are NOT what we expect our politicians to be spending their time on. We have far more pressing matters like a shitty health care system, a trillion dollar war, and millions of kids living in poverty.

This is yet another reason why Americans are apathetic and disgusted with their government. How can you have confidence in a government that spends its time looking into every sports “scandal” that comes along but can’t seem to take the time to agree on its own ethics or answer straight questions about its own behavior? These people cover up their actions, lie (sorry, “hedge the truth”) to the public, do not apologize when they’re wrong (Iraqi WMDs anyone?), and constantly blame the other side for the same shit they just did. Maybe I’ll be a little more inclined to believe that government intervention is helpful in non-governmental situations when they can show that their own behavior matches their rhetoric.

Terri Schiavo isn't the only one who's brain-dead

Let's talk about pro-lifers and Terri Schiavo. In case you live under a rock or think that the news is Satan, you'll remember she's the clinically brain-dead woman whose husband wanted to let her die and whose parents insisted she be kept on life support.

This case brought out the pro-life, every life is sacred, God loves life crowd. They spent months arguing that God demands we keep everyone alive. Letting Terri die would be a crime against God, Terri, and America. Apparently even letting a brain-dead woman die is an issue of patriotism. Essentially it was mass hysteria and making a medical decision tantamount to religious sin.

Here's the problem. The pro-lifers immediately assumed that God wanted Terri to live. But without very expensive, very sophisticated technology, she would die. In fact, in the most natural sense (no machines, no science, just Terri and God) Terri would have died months before she did. So it was a combination of biology, engineering, and chemistry that even allowed us the opportunity to keep her alive. In any previous era, she would have died and people would have said "God wanted it that way". Now that our science has progressed to a point that we can keep her alive (even if we don't know if she'll ever function again), apparently God says "let there be life". The point is that she was, without the technology, doomed to death. Millions of brain-dead people have died in the history of the human race. One more won't bring down the wrath of God. In fact, by your own argument, God wanted them to be brain-dead and die. Why would Terri be any different?

Of course, you can always argue that "God gave us the knowledge and equipment to keep her alive, therefore we should". This is an unprovable, untestable, and specious argument. In the end, Terri died because she was in a state that, without constant time, energy, and technological intervention, is ALWAYS fatal. Seems to me God really wanted her dead and we just kind of prolonged the process. We can argue about the sacredness of life or whether being a vegetable constitutes being alive all day long. That's a fine thing to discuss. But saying "God wants everyone to live" is a poor reason to keep a brain-dead woman on life support.

On top of all that, I would hazard to guess that most people can't afford that kind of treatment. Most types of insurance have lifetime caps. And when the money runs out in a hospital, so does your life support. So I would say that in many cases, even if people wanted to keep loved ones alive, they simply do not have access to the resources (monetary and otherwise) necessary to do so. Are all of these people sinners because of circumstance? No. And stop making it sound like they are. Go back to your magical book and your other crusades and leave the medical decisions to people who've spent their lives dedicated to its art and practice.

Hypocrisy? Wasn't he a Greek dude?

This is why the rest of the world hates America: we are planning to shoot down a spy satellite that is falling out of orbit. That in and of itself isn't the problem. The problem is we just got done bitching and throwing hissy fits at China for doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING. The only difference here is: 1) we're letting people know ahead of time (although that changes exactly nothing about the consequences of the action) and 2) it's us and that makes it ok.

Our government is in the business of saying one thing and doing another (e.g. we're not torturing prisoners when they're actively water-boarding them, we're not spying on our own people while actively tapping phones, etc. etc. ad infinitum). It's also in the business of telling other countries what to do while we do the opposite (e.g. not making nuclear weapons while we design new ones, reducing carbon emissions while we increase our own, etc. etc. ad nauseam). And this is, among many other reasons, why the rest of the world would love nothing more than to see the bully on the block get its comeuppance. You cannot expect another sovereign government to not do something if you are actively doing the same thing. It makes you look like an asshole.

To add insult to injury, the US has offered to pay for any damage to other nation's satellites that may result from the destruction of ours. (I'm tired of every news story being some fucking video I have to watch and sit through commercials, so you
don't get a link). But the expense isn't the point. The point is we made a big stink about China doing it and now we're going to do the same thing. Whether we pay for it or not, we're still going to fill satellite orbits with extra debris when we know that orbital debris is already a major problem. This could easily be avoided by either 1) letting the fucker fall out of the sky (the original plan) or 2) take the next shuttle crew up, attach a rocket, and do a controlled crash into the ocean.

The argument for destruction is that it's a spy satellite, so we have to do it to protect "national secrets". I don't buy it. I might if this were the first such thing to happen during this particular administration and if we hadn't busted China's balls for it. But it's always a "national security" argument with this administration. And my chances of dying because of a breach of national security are the same as they were yesterday and last year: 0%. That makes this a specious argument. It's only advantage is that it can never be proven wrong and so will act as a cover for any other nation that legitimately asks why we're being two-faced about shooting down satellites.

Fuck this hypocrisy. I'm going to get a donut.

Belief Vs. Science: Round II

Stop cherry-picking your science based on your religious beliefs. This is particularly true when discussing evolution, but also applies to astronomy and biology, to name two examples. Here's the way it often works:

Scientist 1: "Electrons flow through the wire and make your tv work"
Believer 1: "I like tv. Now I can watch EWTN"

Scientist 2: "Gravity is the invisible force that pulls masses toward each other"
Believer 2: "Oh good. Now I won't float away when I go to church"

Scientist 3: "Humans are animals and evolved from previous species and animals"
Believer 3: "BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH...GOD DID IT! GOD DID IT!"

I'm not saying that every religious person holds this view, which is, admittedly, a bit extreme. I'm talking about the most vocal and hence most advertised. These are the people that come out every time some new evidence is presented and scream about how we're destroying America with heathen beliefs. We all cherry pick to some extent since science is presented in a social setting and sometimes the evidence challenges our beliefs. But often those beliefs were based on assumptions that turned out to be bad.

Science is based on evidence and observations. After the evidence is studied, a theory is put forth to attempt to explain the observations. Theories are evaluated for consistency and the one that explains the most is the one used. When contrary evidence arises, the theory is revised or thrown out. But until a better theory or contrary evidence is presented, evolution stands as the best explanation of where we came from. It accounts for the observations and is consistent with what we observe both today and in the fossil record. The theory isn't perfect. But then again neither is the theory of gravity and we don't seem to have a problem with that.

It's true that saying "God did it" is a viable hypothesis. But since it can never be proven (by definition) it should not be presented as such. There is NO evidence you can bring that will show that God did or did not create humans. Therefore, your argument can never be validated and hence, cannot be considered scientific. So stop brining it into the science classroom and into the scientific discussion and literature. Keep it in the realm of philosophy where it properly belongs.

I'm of the opinion that if you want to cherry pick science to conform to your religious views rather than using your brain to look at the world in front of you, you're essentially saying "I'm not going to use the logical thought processes that God gave me." How is it that it's acceptable to understand electricity, magnetism, why the wind blows, how to build a house, and how babies are made but it's not ok to look at the past and understand where humans came from? Evolution in no way negates your religious views. Knowing that the universe started with a big bang should not effect your conviction that God set the wheels in motion. If your beliefs are so easily eroded by examining the natural world (that your God ostensibly created), then I could easily reach the conclusion that your beliefs weren't that strong or that accurate in the first place. We'll discuss this idea more in the final round tomorrow. For now, I want you to think about why some science is considered "good, moral science" and other science considered "inappropriate, atheist propaganda" when all science is an attempt to explain what we see around us and all science is based on observing what is happening right in front of you.

Belief Vs. Science: Round I

No, we're not discussing the deity/no-deity hypothesis. Arguing about whether there's a supreme deity or not is kind of like arguing about whether or not John Edward can talk to the dead - it's a waste of time because you can't prove one way or the other. Although it's a great way to give your more gullible friends apoplexy.

Today's round is about that misunderstood and generally maligned topic GLO-BAL WAR-MING (for the pronunciation, just imagine I'm discussing the dreaded gum disease GIN-GI-VI-TIS). It's a popular pastime for people that don't know better (and some that do) to go on national television and say some shit like "I don't believe in global warming". Here's the problem: it's not a question of belief. Scientists aren't asking you to believe in the volcano god or that Gaia is pissed. There's nothing to believe or disbelieve. There's only evidence. By definition, a belief requires no evidence. Hence, there's no rational way to argue that there is or isn't a volcano god. Go Vulcan!

You can, of course, have different interpretations of evidence. But when all of the evidence is consistent with only one hypothesis, that hypothesis wins by default until a better one comes along or until contrary evidence shows up. So...does the evidence point to warming? Yes. Does the warming correspond almost one-for-one with increases in industrial activity and agriculture? Yes. Can the amount of warming be explained by natural processes (changes in sunlight, ocean circulation, Earth's orbit, volcanic acitivity)? No. Therefore, simple logic tells you we are responsible. Humans are the cause of the warming. There's nothing to believe. And so far, there is no explanation that has been put forward that is as consistent with the evidence. So stop bitching about it and start doing something to change it.

If you don't "believe" in global warming then I guess you don't believe in electricity, the ozone hole, or gravity (or as its known to those in the loop "God's magical fall-down formula" - wish I could take credit for that, but it's all Ben). So instead of spreading misinformation, pseudo-science, and poorly supported but loud and authoritative-sounding rhetoric, why don't you crawl back under your rock and let the people that want to face reality do so without you.

The word tragic is thrown around a lot today...

Am I the only person that is tired of seeing the word tragedy used to describe situations that aren't tragic? It's like the word hero. Not everyone is a fucking hero. And not every car crash and cancer diagnosis is tragic. Let me see if I can help illuminate the difference.

When teenagers or college students get drunk and kill themselves or their friends in a collision, it's NOT TRAGIC. They fucking knew better. Every school teaches kids that drunk driving is stupid. Every school and every alert parent tells their kids never to get into a car with a person who's been drinking. So when they do it and end up dead it's not tragic. They were being stupid. And when you do stupid things, don't be surprised when stupid things happen.

When you build your house on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean and your house then falls into the ocean it's NOT TRAGIC. Are you retarded? The house has nowhere to go but over the edge. And you do not control the ocean or the weather. So whenever I see this on the news, I laugh.

When you smoke for 30 years and get lung cancer it's NOT TRAGIC. You're stupid. You have no one to blame but yourself and no one should feel bad for you. You knew the risk and you should accept the consequences. So don't come crying to the news station to do a story about your "tragic situation". Fuck you.

When a drunk driver kills OTHER drivers, that IS TRAGIC, particularly when that person walks away with no injuries. Those people were killed because of another person's idiocy, not their own. They had no control over the situation. So you empathize with them. This also applies to situations in which people kill or injure other people because they can't be bothered to slow down in fog, ice, snow, heavy rain, or any situation where common sense tells you to slow down.

When a natural disaster happens and you're too poor to afford to leave the area you're in (a la New Orleans) or live in an area that is too poor to have facilities for early warning (a la Indonesia 2004) IT'S TRAGIC. When the government then fails to help the affected citizens, IT'S TRAGIC. Notice the pattern. When you have control over your situation and choose to do something dumb, it's not tragic when you get fucked up. When you have no control over the situation and other people are responsible for what happens to you, I'll empathize with you.

As a last example, when your house burns because your Christmas tree caught on fire, it's NOT TRAGIC. Every year, there are more than 10,000 fires across this country on the three days from Dec. 24-26, a large number of them due to trees. That should tell you not to bring a dry, dead tree into your home and surround it with electrical wires. So I don't feel bad when your house burns down.

If people just used a modicum of common sense, there would be far less need to describe any situation as tragic in the first place.