The Cold Equations

[Brian Pickrell]

[ The story so far: In the science fiction story _The Cold Equations,_ a
young female stowaway on a spaceship has to be tossed out the airlock
because there isn't enough fuel to land with the additional mass aboard.
The author's intended message was that the laws of nature are unforgiving.
Richard Harter blames the authorities instead, for failing to take
adequate precautions against stowaways. He also blames the author, Tom
Godwin, for a blame-the-victim mentality... ]

Bernard Peek (b...@intersec.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: In article <5dlg4h$o...@news-central.tiac.net>, Richard Harter
: <c...@tiac.net> writes

: >
: >>In fact your criticism of the original story is based on additional
: >>material that you fabricated.
: >
: >You make a point of a sort. I did not make it as clear as I might
: >have what they *did* not do, steps that are obvious. I quote:

: You made it clear that you felt that these were obvious, but failed to
: demonstrate that this follows from the text. The method by which the
: girl gains access to the ship isn't discussed in any detail, and
: therefore can't sensibly be subject to

: >
: >You would be wrong. The pilot does not make a routine
: >check for stowaways and feels no remorse for not
: >having done so. No effort is made to keep stowaways
: >out except for an uninformative sign. Nothing stops the
: >young woman from just wandering on board.
: >
: >If it makes you happy I will follow the author and call her a girl.
: >Now what was not done in the story?
: >
: >There is no lock on the door.
: >The girl is not informed of the policy.
: >The sign does not say anything about stowaways.
: >The pilot does not check his vehicle before taking off.

: I don't recall this being stated.

: >
: >These are routine, obvious precautions. The threat of a stowaway
: >is serious; so serious that the pilot is issued a blaster. Yet the
: >obvious precautions are not taken. All of this is quite clear in the
: >story.

: >
: >The author wished to set up a certain situation, one in which a
: >certain moral would hold. The simple fact is that he was sloppy about
: >doing so. I sympathize with him. Writing fiction is work; setting up
: >scenarios in which all the bases are covered takes quite a bit of
: >thought.

: And the effort involved couln't really be justified because it wouldn't
: have materially affected the story, except possibly to bury it in
: padding. The author's point was that the laws of gravity can't be
: repealed. It made the point succinctly and effectively, witness the
: story is still being discussed decades later.

I have to agree with Mr. Harter here. A writer should be able to set up a
scene adequately and concisely without leaving huge logical gaps. For
instance:

'Jeepers!' said the pilot, 'how did you get on board? Entry to this
area is carefully controlled, and there are warning signs telling you that
stowing away is very dangerous.'

'Oh, I slipped past the sensors,' replied the girl. 'And I never read
warning signs. But don't worry, I'm young and beautiful and my daddy's
rich, so the rules don't apply to me.'

Okay, it still needs a little more brushing up, but you get the idea.

: > Given the economics of writing short fiction (ASF paid three
: >cents a word at the time and they were the market leader) one, of
: >necessity, grinds the stuff out.

That's three cents more than I'm getting for writing this. Maybe I won't
bother brushing it up.

: >
: >Now it is quite clear what moral the author wished to draw, wished to
: >present to us. (Although the odds are that it was Campbell's idea and
: >Godwin wrote it on order.) But if we look at the situation actually
: >presented in the story it does not support the moral; that is the
: >first point of the essay.

: I understand that to be your premise. The story, as written, does
: support the moral (not really the right word in this context, morality
: was excluded from the central premise of the story). Your revised form
: may not, but it isn't the story that Godwin wrote.

: > The second point is that the situation
: >really supports a different and much uglier moral - that of
: >bureaucratic callousness and rationalization of that callousness. The
: >third point is that this fundamental defect escapes the editor (not
: >surprising) and the SF community.

: It's obviously possible to read this into the story, you've done it. I
: wouldn't have considered the issues you raise to have been important to
: the story, and now that you've pointed them out, I still don't. Over-
: reading can torture almost any story into supporting almost any theory
: about its contents. It's pointless because the criticism becomes a work
: of fiction in its own right, owing little to the original text.

: I'm sure that had Godwin thought that the points you raised were worth
: the effort he would have thrown in an extra paragraph to deal with them.
: Personally I think the effort would have been a wasted effort.

It tells a lot about the author (and his audience) to note which points he
thought were worth covering, and which he didn't. In this case, the
underlying assumption is that rockets are dangerous machinery, that
there's no margin for error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would
_The Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a rowboat?

The reason I crossposted this article is that the same premise is in
effect today. The Space Shuttle is still vulnerable to single-point
failures; if something goes wrong, everybody gets blown up. This is a
fundamental design defect, and space travel will never be practical until
the rocket designers abandon the _Cold Equations_ mentality and decide
that exposing passengers to this kind of danger is simply not acceptable.

: There's a more serious criticism of the work. The additional mass of the
: girl would have been detected almost instantly because of its effect on
: the course of the ship. The only way she could have avoided it would
: have been to discard her own mass in other objects. Had she done that it
: would have negated the entire central premise.

: >
: >It is the final point that is most damning of SF, in my opinion. The
: >story is a fine bit of melodrama and people respond to the melodrama
: >and the authors moralizaing without thinking about what actually went
: >on in the story. That is slop. Slop is the norm in SF.

: Hard SF of this vintage, particularly at short story length, was usually
: written around one central idea. The central idea in this case is that
: there are situations when the universe won't let you win.

: When I run management training courses I often set up at least one role-
: play scenario as a lose/lose situation. To avoid any accusations of
: unfairness I use situations that really happened. The Cold Equations was
: a scenario of that type. I realise it's unpleasant to realise that in
: some situations you can't win, but the universe is like that sometimes.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Pickrell

[Bill MacArthur]

I can't believe that this thread has returned! It seems to me that you
have stored this on disk, stewed over it and reposted.

pma...@eskimo.com (Brian Pickrell) wrote:
>[ The story so far: In the science fiction story _The Cold Equations,_ a
>young female stowaway on a spaceship has to be tossed out the airlock
>because there isn't enough fuel to land with the additional mass aboard.
>The author's intended message was that the laws of nature are unforgiving.
>Richard Harter blames the authorities instead, for failing to take
>adequate precautions against stowaways. He also blames the author, Tom
>Godwin, for a blame-the-victim mentality... ]
>

People are not victims when they suffer the consequences of dumb ass
mistakes.

>'Jeepers!' said the pilot, 'how did you get on board? Entry to this
>area is carefully controlled, and there are warning signs telling you that
>stowing away is very dangerous.'
>
>'Oh, I slipped past the sensors,' replied the girl. 'And I never read
>warning signs. But don't worry, I'm young and beautiful and my daddy's
>rich, so the rules don't apply to me.'
>
>Okay, it still needs a little more brushing up, but you get the idea.
>

I think if you criticize the story with quotation marks you should quote
it verbatim. The story made the point that she had been warned but she
just didn't believe it. I don't remember reading anything about sensors
in stories of that era. Naval analogies were far more prevalent.

BTW do rich brats not behave in the manner you described? Or poor brats
for that manner? How many young lives are snuffed out through
misadventure such as River Phoenix's a few years ago? How many die of
alcohol/drug related deaths, car accidents, AIDS and general
misadventure? Weren't they adequately warned?

>It tells a lot about the author (and his audience) to note which points he
>thought were worth covering, and which he didn't. In this case, the
>underlying assumption is that rockets are dangerous machinery, that
>there's no margin for error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would
>_The Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a rowboat?
>

You have missed the point completely. This is a cautionary tale. The
point is that the universe is uncaring. It does want to save us or kill
us, it just is and we have to live with it. As for your rowboat story,
read some sea stories. Start with _The Cruel Sea_.

>The reason I crossposted this article is that the same premise is in
>effect today. The Space Shuttle is still vulnerable to single-point
>failures; if something goes wrong, everybody gets blown up. This is a
>fundamental design defect, and space travel will never be practical until
>the rocket designers abandon the _Cold Equations_ mentality and decide
>that exposing passengers to this kind of danger is simply not acceptable.
>

I'm glad you weren't around when Columbus was ready to sail. The Nina,
Pinta and Santa Maria would still be in dry- dock.

[William Burns]

Cross posted to rec.arts.sf.written where people more knowledgeable
than I may offer their own criticisms. (God! That would be
everyone.)

Warning: Spoilers included for the few (very few?) who have _not_
read 'The Cold Equations'.

c...@tiac.net (Richard Harter) wrote:

>THE COLD EQUATIONS

(Critical Essay Snipped)

I've delayed responding because I wanted to re-read the story but,
unfortunately, must rely on memory as I could not find it.

Many of the arguments that were raised when this story first appeared
are brought up again, along with one new one. (New to me, that is.)
And that is the rather modern idea that people are not responsible for
their own actions.

While I agree with Mr. Harter's observations that the entrance to the
ship should have been locked, the pilot should have done a pre-flight
search of his vessel and extra fuel should have been carried, we have
to remember that this is a story that would never have been told had
those three conditions been met.

Everyone on board the passenger liner had been warned of the
consequences of stowing away on these emergency ships. Signs were
posted warning them away. From memory, every passenger was given
literature explaining the reasons for this. And the young lady still
decided to sneak aboard in full knowledge that she would be killed.
That she did not believe the warnings she had received is the true
tragedy.

Upon discovering her, the pilot did not immediately kill her. Again,
if he had, this short story would be even shorter. The author needed
her alive, temporarily, to show the reader exactly why she had to die.
Oh, yes. It most definitely is a tear jerker.

From memory, again, the furnishings of the vessel were _part_ of the
vessel. Impossible to throw away without first cutting them away from
the hull. If the pilot even had the tools, or the time, to do so.
Things can be jettisoned - the notepad, clothing, etc - but in total,
they hardly make up for the young ladys mass.

The only item, besides her, that would make up the mass was the pilot.
The stowaway, however, does not know how to pilot the vessel - cannot
land it. It is very doubtful if the pilot could have taught her and
that point is made in the story.

And the new argument - that she did not die as the result of her own
actions, but because the bureaucrats were criminally negligent.
Unsecured door, no pre-flight check, no extra fuel. Let me re-state
that if these conditions had been met, there would have been no story.

But, let us assume that one of these conditions had been met. That
the door had been secured, but the young lady was a master lock-pick
and got in anyway. Would the bureaucrats have still been negligent?
According to many (fairly) recent newspaper accounts where a burglar
broke into a secured house and received an injury (ie, tripped over a
coffee table in the dark and broke his leg, then suing the owner and
winning) - the answer would be yes. But this story was written 40
years ago when the prevailing attitude would have been _tough luck,
buddy_.

Disclaimer - did read a newspaper article similar to the above burglar
incident, but do not remember the exact circumstances. An event that
was, probably, more widely reported, was when the elderly woman
spilled hot coffee upon herself and successfully sued the chain that
sold her the coffee. That she was guiding her vehicle through
traffic, thereby (at least once) removing both hands from the steering
wheel (unless she opened it with her teeth - still unsafe) was
reported, but was seemingly ignored.

Yet - despite what the present day American courts have decided -
people _are_ responsible for their own actions. As was the young lady
in 'The Cold Equations'. Her surviving family would have had no
legitimate reason, at the time the story was written, to initiate a
civil suit. In todays world, of course, this is not true. More's the
pity.

--William

A man said to the universe,
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation." (Stephen Crane)

[Edward Wright]

In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>, j...@Steam.stanford.edu
says...

>Aircraft are subject to single-point failures. All it takes is one
>bomb. The design of the Shuttle involved as much redundancy as could
>be afforded. Space exploration to date has proved less dangerous than
>the arctic and high mountain exploration of the previous two
>centuries.

Several astronauts, including the former head of the NASA astronaut
office, John Young, have disputed this. NASA spent over $35 billion on the
Shuttle, yet the Shuttle didn't even have a drag chute for landing, until
after the Challenger accident. It's hard to argue, with a straight face,
that it was because NASA couldn't afford one.

>Some people are braver that Pickrell evidently thinks they ought to be.

Bravery has nothing to do with it. NASA granted itself more than 800
Criticality 1 (non-redundant) safety waivers on the Space Shuttle. No
safety waivers were allowed in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, or Skyalb
programs. That's not because the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo astronauts
were less brave.

--
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views
and do not reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation.

[dkn...@efn.org]

Bill MacArthur says that the girl in "The Cold Equations" "was warned"
but didn't pay any attention. All the story tells us about this is that
there was a sign over the door, "UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!"

Damon

[Scott A. Munro]

Someone within the last few years wrote a fictional "response" to
Godwin's story called "The Cold Solutions." The solution the pilot
came up with is to hack various body parts off herself and the
stowaway and eject them, thus allowing both to live.
-----
Scott A. Munro http://www.nextdim.com/users/smunro/
Read my horror story "Immortal"
<http://tale.com/munro/imm-free.htm>
on the web at Mind's Eye Fiction <http://tale.com/>

[PMccutc103]

pma...@eskimo.com (Brian Pickrell) wrote:

>The reason I crossposted this article is that the same premise is in
>effect today. The Space Shuttle is still vulnerable to single-point
>failures; if something goes wrong, everybody gets blown up. This is a
>fundamental design defect, and space travel will never be practical until
>the rocket designers abandon the _Cold Equations_ mentality and decide
>that exposing passengers to this kind of danger is simply not acceptable.

That's just silly. I haven't done a statistical analysis, but I would bet
that the chances of dying on the shuttle are far lower than the chances of
dying faced by the average passenger on a trip across the Atlantic at any
time prior to 1900. And ocean travel was clearly "practical" by 1900.
Your problem is the modern obsession with making life risk-free. So long
as passengers assume any risks voluntarily, there is no moral or practical
problem with letting them take those risks. The reason space travel isn't
practical today is because a) it's expensive as all hell and b) there
isn't much of any place that's worth _going to_. If Mars were like
Kansas, we'd be there now, no matter the risks.

Oh, and I agree with you that the story is not that well-crafted. It's
silly to think that nobody would have thought to mention that stowaways
would be shot and stuffed out the airlock. But the story is about the
imutability of natural law, and the fact that we're discussing a mediocre
story by a forgotten writer demonstrates that it succeeded at some level.
________________________

Pete McCutchen

[James S. Partridge]

wbu...@geraldton.lakeheadu.ca (William Burns) wrote:

>Disclaimer - did read a newspaper article similar to the above burglar
>incident, but do not remember the exact circumstances. An event that
>was, probably, more widely reported, was when the elderly woman
>spilled hot coffee upon herself and successfully sued the chain that
>sold her the coffee. That she was guiding her vehicle through
>traffic, thereby (at least once) removing both hands from the steering
>wheel (unless she opened it with her teeth - still unsafe) was
>reported, but was seemingly ignored.

TWEEET! Reality check. If you read this in a newspaper, the
newspaper was wrong. I kept copies of California Lawyer with
explainations of the case because this is invariably the case that
people use to show that our legal system is "out of control," but they
always get the facts wrong. The woman was not driving through traffic
at the time of the injury, she was parked. The coffee spilled because
the lid to the cup did not open correctly (the little "pop top" that's
supposed to tear off wouldn't tear), and when the lady tried to open
the thing, the top popped off with a jolt, causing the spill. The
main reason for the high punitive damages award against McDonalds was
because McDonalds had been hit several times before for selling its
coffee at too high a temperature. (Evidently, the coffee needs to be
brewed at a high temperature, but must be served at a decidedly lower
temperature -- McDonalds was simply unwilling to delay their
assembly-line by instituting procedures that would have set the coffee
aside long enough to cool to a safe temperature.) The jury was
presented with these facts, and decided to send McDonalds a message
the only way it could: in the pocketbook. Guess what? It worked.
McDonalds finally changed its coffee-making procedures. This example,
outrageous when you get the 3rd hand newspaper reports, is acturally a
counter-example to your thesis. This is an example of the American
legal system working, and working well.

>Yet - despite what the present day American courts have decided -
>people _are_ responsible for their own actions. As was the young lady
>in 'The Cold Equations'. Her surviving family would have had no
>legitimate reason, at the time the story was written, to initiate a
>civil suit. In todays world, of course, this is not true. More's the
>pity.

On the contrary, the present day American courts hold all, including
large corporations like McDonalds, responsible for their actions. (If
McDonalds could have shown that the woman involved was responsable for
her injuries, thein the damages she suffered would have been off-set
by the percentage of her fault or eliminated entirely. It was a
statistical certainty in the case you cite that someone would be
injured if McDonalds continued to sell its coffee at temperatures that
result in 2nd degree burns. Unlike the story, there was a simple fix
-- McDonalds simply would have had to change its procedures (as it
eventually did). They resisted doing so until forced to by the jury
system. You would have McDonalds escape responsibility for its
actions and place the burden of certain injury upon its customers.

Now, as to TCE, I believe that in the story it was mentioned that the
woman had ignored warnings before she stowed away. Under current
American law, she would have been barred from recovery should those
warnings have been adequate to inform her of the risk. Indeed, the
law in this country has not changed since the story was written in the
50's (is that right? its been a while since I read it).

Jim.

[PMccutc103]

Scott A. Munro wrote:

>Someone within the last few years wrote a fictional "response" to
>Godwin's story called "The Cold Solutions." The solution the pilot
>came up with is to hack various body parts off herself and the
>stowaway and eject them, thus allowing both to live.

People sometimes _die_ today, in modern, fully equipped hospitals, when
they have limbs amputated. Yea, I know, people in the Civil War had limbs
amputated under very crude conditions and lived to tell the tale. But a
_lot_ of them died as well. And even those who didn't were incapacitated
for some period as the result of the operation. What are the chances that
the pilot and the girl could have hacked off enough arms and legs to make
up her weight and that the pilot would have been in good enough shape to
land the vehicle? Zero.
________________________

Pete McCutchen

[Dan Evens]

William Burns wrote:
> And the new argument - that she did not die as the result of her own
> actions, but because the bureaucrats were criminally negligent.
> Unsecured door, no pre-flight check, no extra fuel.

Actually, not that new an idea at all. A Sufi story from around 1360
tells of a thief breaking into a house. He slips on the window sill
and injures himself. Sues the house owner for damages. House owner
says it was the carpenter's fault. Carpenter says it was the brick
layer's fault because the portal for the window was improper. Brick
layer says he was distracted by a pretty woman walking in the street.
Woman says it's her dress that makes everybody look, because it's so
cunningly died, so the dress maker is at fault. Dressmaker turns
out to be the thief himself.

--
Standard disclaimers apply.
I don't buy from people who advertise by e-mail.
I don't buy from their ISPs.
Dan Evens

[LAL]

In article <5drqbf$3...@camel0.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com wrote:

<bullshit cut>

> The jury was
> presented with these facts, and decided to send McDonalds a message
> the only way it could: in the pocketbook. Guess what? It worked.
> McDonalds finally changed its coffee-making procedures. This example,
> outrageous when you get the 3rd hand newspaper reports, is acturally a
> counter-example to your thesis. This is an example of the American
> legal system working, and working well.

bullshit again - all that happened is someone dumped hot coffee on their
crotch and now I can't buy coffee at McDonalds that's hot enough to make it
to the parking lot still drinkable, much less down the road a bit.

as you explained earlier in the post, the lady was having trouble opening
the lid? so she dumped the coffee in her lap? and it's big Macs fault? and
the reason is a few other worms out of some umpteen trillion Mac coffee
drinkers did something similar and tried for Mac's brass ring before she
did?

Lawyers should be required to take a course in symbolic logic and Boolean
algebra while at the university, and university physics through E&M, so
they might have some clue about cause and effect. Pretty simple concept to
some, but obviously not to others.

I wonder if I can zap Burger King if I get hit by a meteor in their parking
lot. I guess first we need to notify BK a couple of times that not roofing
their lot with armour plate is endangering patrons? OK, Burger King, you've
been so warned in a public forum. Be aware.

Ack. I refer you to the Shakespear quote re the proper disposal of Lawyers . . .
--
Standard disclaimers apply. Nobody here ever agrees with me on anything.

[Matt Austern]

pmccu...@aol.com (PMccutc103) writes:

> pma...@eskimo.com (Brian Pickrell) wrote:
>
> >The reason I crossposted this article is that the same premise is in
> >effect today. The Space Shuttle is still vulnerable to single-point
> >failures; if something goes wrong, everybody gets blown up. This is a
> >fundamental design defect, and space travel will never be practical until
> >the rocket designers abandon the _Cold Equations_ mentality and decide
> >that exposing passengers to this kind of danger is simply not acceptable.
>

> That's just silly. I haven't done a statistical analysis, but I would bet
> that the chances of dying on the shuttle are far lower than the chances of
> dying faced by the average passenger on a trip across the Atlantic at any
> time prior to 1900.

There have been very few shuttle flights, and one of them failed
disastrously. It's hard to say anything quantitative, since the
statistics are so low, but this is not a sign of a safe and mature
technology.

[Ron Hardin]

As I dimly remember, when consumer product liability came in, the
reasoning was given as follows:

The manufacturers ought to pay for damages their products cause,
so that we have an efficient tradeoff of safety and price -
if a product is too dangerous, lawsuits are more expensive than
fixing the product, and the product gets fixed. Conversely,
too much safety is penalized because the price is higher than
the competitors'. Thus we get market-driven just-right safety,
responsive to whatever conditions obtain at the time, people's
preferences for price and risk, and so on.

This got conservative and liberal support, and passed.

What happened instead that juries began to ``send a message'' to
manufacturers, whenever anybody sued, and the price of a lawsuit
began to take over the field, instead of occuring at natural
rates in natural amounts for the injury. Awarding more than the
natural amount for the injury ruins the balance. Thus now safety is
everywhere, against the inclination of consumers. So for instance you
can't buy an American light airplane, where they used to be
plentiful, because the manufacturers left; as if before that
consumers didn't know airplanes could crash when they bought one.

consuming cold coffee ...
--
Ron Hardin
r...@research.att.com

On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.

[PMccutc103]

ji...@pipeline.com (James S. Partridge) wrote:

>wbu...@geraldton.lakeheadu.ca (William Burns) wrote:
>
>>Disclaimer - did read a newspaper article similar to the above burglar
>>incident, but do not remember the exact circumstances. An event that

This is to Mr. Burns: The burglar incident to which you refer is probably
something of an urban myth. In at least one widely reported case, a
tresspasser sued a school and won after he fell through a skylight on a
roof. The insurance companies used this story in advertising to suggest
that the tort system was "out of control." What they failed to explain
was that a) the skylight had been painted over with black paint, making it
very difficult to distinguish the skylight from the black tar on the roof
and b) the school knew that students had gotten up on the roof in the past
and took no steps to prevent this from happening again.

Now, you might _still_ want to say: "you're a trespasser, tough shit."
This is, in fact, the old common law rule, and I personally think that it
has something to commend it. But we've been moving away from that rule
for quite some time now. Most first year law students read one of the
first cases rejecting this rule, which involved railroad turntables and
was written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

As to the burglar in your home -- he does have a claim if you set a trap,
such as a springgun, and use it to kill him. But if he merely trips over
a coffee table in the dark, he would not have a claim. My guess is that
the newspaper article either failed to report some salient fact or that
the facts are in dispute and the plaintiff merely won some very
preliminary procedural ruling.

There _are_ some really dumb cases out there. But they're not quite as
dumb as they are made out to be. And, in a lot of cases, the claims
themselves would be valid if true, but the plaintiff's lawyers and their
"experts" are able to fool the fact-finder. For example, breast implants
are almost certainly _not_ responsible for the whole host of maladies that
they are alleged to have caused. But try telling that to a jury.

>>was, probably, more widely reported, was when the elderly woman
>>spilled hot coffee upon herself and successfully sued the chain that
>>sold her the coffee. That she was guiding her vehicle through
>>traffic, thereby (at least once) removing both hands from the steering
>>wheel (unless she opened it with her teeth - still unsafe) was
>>reported, but was seemingly ignored.
>
>TWEEET! Reality check. If you read this in a newspaper, the
>newspaper was wrong. I kept copies of California Lawyer with

Note though that the California Lawyer has its own axe to grind in this
matter.

>explainations of the case because this is invariably the case that
>people use to show that our legal system is "out of control," but they
>always get the facts wrong. The woman was not driving through traffic
>at the time of the injury, she was parked. The coffee spilled because
>the lid to the cup did not open correctly (the little "pop top" that's
>supposed to tear off wouldn't tear), and when the lady tried to open
>the thing, the top popped off with a jolt, causing the spill. The

Yes, but she still had the _hot coffee_ strategically placed between her
legs, so that when it spilled it could get to more of her body. And she
still knew it was hot and had some obligation to open the lid with care.

>main reason for the high punitive damages award against McDonalds was
>because McDonalds had been hit several times before for selling its
>coffee at too high a temperature. (Evidently, the coffee needs to be
>brewed at a high temperature, but must be served at a decidedly lower
>temperature -- McDonalds was simply unwilling to delay their

"Must" be sold at that lower temperature according to the plaintiff's
lawyer. The coffee that comes out of my coffee maker emerges at 183
degrees -- three degrees hotter than McDonalds is alleged to have sold its
coffee. Now you're right; I don't drink it immediately or rub it on my
flesh straigh out of the machine. I let it cool. There is no question
that coffee should cool before being consumed.
The question, though, is whether the _customer_, who presumably knows how
hot he or she likes the coffee should get the coffee hot and then allow it
to cool to the preferred temperature or whether McDonalds should pre-cool
the coffee so it can be consumed immediately. Actually, so it _must_ be
consumed immediately, because pre-cooled coffee will get _cold_ fast.

I think that I'm smart enough to know that fresh hot coffee should be
given a chance to cool. I'm a big boy, so I can decide how hot I want my
coffee to be whne I drink it. I know this when I'm making coffee at home,
and I know it when I order coffee out. Fresh coffee is hot. People know
that, or they ought to know it.

Face it: the lady was being a dipshit. That's OK. The other day I cut my
finger while using a knife carelessly; I was being a dipshit. The
difference is that I don't sue the knife company for my own idiocy.

>assembly-line by instituting procedures that would have set the coffee
>aside long enough to cool to a safe temperature.) The jury was

Or it could be that the customers want coffee hot enough so that they can
wait a minute or so before drinking and still have it be drinkable.

>presented with these facts, and decided to send McDonalds a message
>the only way it could: in the pocketbook. Guess what? It worked.
>McDonalds finally changed its coffee-making procedures. This example,

Right. And now all the people who wait five seconds to start drinking
their coffee and those who like their coffee real hot (like me, actually)
get coffee that's too cold. That really made society better off. Just as
it's made society better off to keep women who have had mastectomies from
getting silicone breast implants.

>outrageous when you get the 3rd hand newspaper reports, is acturally a
>counter-example to your thesis. This is an example of the American
>legal system working, and working well.

It's not _as_ stupid as it's made out to be, but it's still a pretty
stupid case. By the way, one of the aspects of the legal system that
_did_ work in this case, or worked some, was the appellate process. The
punitive damages were reduced on appeal. She didn't get the five million
she was awarded by the jury.

>
>>Yet - despite what the present day American courts have decided -
>>people _are_ responsible for their own actions. As was the young lady
>>in 'The Cold Equations'. Her surviving family would have had no
>>legitimate reason, at the time the story was written, to initiate a
>>civil suit. In todays world, of course, this is not true. More's the
>>pity.
>
>On the contrary, the present day American courts hold all, including
>large corporations like McDonalds, responsible for their actions. (If

The problem is that despite having very highly paid lawyers, large
corporations run into a signficant anti-corporate bias. The "evil
corporation" is a stock figure in Hollywood these days, and juries are
quite willing to make the big guy pay even when he's done nothing wrong.
Witness the breast implant litigation.

>McDonalds could have shown that the woman involved was responsable for
>her injuries, thein the damages she suffered would have been off-set

By the way, I'm skeptical about her damages. I know, she had medical
testimony -- but the words "plaintiff's expert" and "lying scumbag" should
be cross-referenced in the dictionary. My guess is that lure of the
dollar sign made her pain and suffering seem a lot worse than it was.

>by the percentage of her fault or eliminated entirely. It was a
>statistical certainty in the case you cite that someone would be

So fucking what?

It is a statistical certainty that some people will choke to death on meat
or other food served in restaurants throughout this country. Does that
mean the every restaurant must puree the food in order to prevent the
statistically-certain death?

>injured if McDonalds jp 1
________________________

Pete McCutchen

[New York Theosophical Society]

John McCarthy (j...@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
: error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would _The

: Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a
: rowboat?

: Similar stories have been set in rowboats. Usually, the actions that
: lead to the sacrifice of lives can be fuzzed up a little.

A doctor, a lawyer, and an accountant were in shark-infested
waters in a rowboat. There was a shore in sight, but the rowboat was
sinking; it could not make it to shore with all three people on board.
The lawyer, seeing this, said, "You row to shore; I'll jump into the
water", and proceeded to do so. The doctor and accountant rowed the boat
to shore, and, much to their amazement, saw the lawyer swim safely to
shore, flanked by sharks on either side.

"Why didn't the sharks eat you?" asked the doctor, in surprise.

"Professional courtesy", said the lawyer.

[Bruce McGuffin]

Jim Partridge wrote:

wbu...@geraldton.lakeheadu.ca (William Burns) wrote:

>Disclaimer - did read a newspaper article similar to the above burglar
>incident, but do not remember the exact circumstances. An event that

>was, probably, more widely reported, was when the elderly woman
>spilled hot coffee upon herself and successfully sued the chain that
>sold her the coffee. That she was guiding her vehicle through
>traffic, thereby (at least once) removing both hands from the steering
>wheel (unless she opened it with her teeth - still unsafe) was
>reported, but was seemingly ignored.

TWEEET! Reality check. If you read this in a newspaper, the
newspaper was wrong. I kept copies of California Lawyer with

explainations of the case because this is invariably the case that
people use to show that our legal system is "out of control," but they
always get the facts wrong. The woman was not driving through traffic
at the time of the injury, she was parked. The coffee spilled because
the lid to the cup did not open correctly (the little "pop top" that's
supposed to tear off wouldn't tear), and when the lady tried to open
the thing, the top popped off with a jolt, causing the spill. The

main reason for the high punitive damages award against McDonalds was
because McDonalds had been hit several times before for selling its
coffee at too high a temperature. (Evidently, the coffee needs to be
brewed at a high temperature, but must be served at a decidedly lower
temperature -- McDonalds was simply unwilling to delay their

assembly-line by instituting procedures that would have set the coffee
aside long enough to cool to a safe temperature.) The jury was

presented with these facts, and decided to send McDonalds a message
the only way it could: in the pocketbook. Guess what? It worked.
McDonalds finally changed its coffee-making procedures. This example,

outrageous when you get the 3rd hand newspaper reports, is acturally a
counter-example to your thesis. This is an example of the American
legal system working, and working well.

Yes, by golly, it works very well. A friend of mine who owns a
McDonald's franchise in Connecticut tells me that another spilled
coffee lawsuit is brought against him on average every one to two
weeks. His insurance company settles for a few thousand dollars (less
than it would cost to fight the suit in court, assuming he wins), then
raises his rates. The plaintiff's lawyer gets 1/3 (or more) of the
settlement. Can you say barratry? Good, I thought you could. How about
extortion?

Bruce McGuffin

[Robert A. Woodward]

In article <19970212175...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
pmccu...@aol.com (PMccutc103) wrote:

That's right. Saker (author of "The Cold Solution") had to cheat on the
setup (the stowaway was much smaller than the one in "The Cold Equations).

--
rawoo...@aol.com
robe...@halcyon.com
cjp...@prodigy.com

[Joel Altman]

pma...@eskimo.com (Brian Pickrell) wrote:

PM>[ The story so far: In the science fiction story _The Cold Equations,_ a
PM>young female stowaway on a spaceship has to be tossed out the airlock
PM>because there isn't enough fuel to land with the additional mass aboard.
PM>The author's intended message was that the laws of nature are unforgiving.

PM>It tells a lot about the author (and his audience) to note which points he
PM>thought were worth covering, and which he didn't. In this case, the
PM>underlying assumption is that rockets are dangerous machinery, that
PM>there's no margin for error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would
PM>_The Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a rowboat?

I believe this story is a retelling of a Russian folk tale. In that
case, the sleigh driver tosses out the least useful passenger to feed
the hungry wolves. There is no margin for error involved.

PM>The reason I crossposted this article is that the same premise is in
PM>effect today. The Space Shuttle is still vulnerable to single-point
PM>failures; if something goes wrong, everybody gets blown up.

A shuttle stowaway wouldn't cause an explosion. No matter the load the
shuttle uses all its fuel on the way up. If the extra weight is within
the envelope, the shuttle still goes into the planned orbit. After
ascent, the prop or guido controllers will figure out that they were
carrying extra mass and its location in the vehicle. If the extra
weight is so great as to be outside the envelope, the shuttle will, most
likely, end up in the Indian Ocean.

Good reading,
Joel
---
ş OLX 2.1 TD ş If you don't like this reality, use the Delete key.

[Wim Lewis]

In article <fxtn2t9...@isolde.mti.sgi.com>,

Matt Austern <aus...@isolde.mti.sgi.com> wrote:
>There have been very few shuttle flights, and one of them failed
>disastrously. It's hard to say anything quantitative, since the
>statistics are so low, but this is not a sign of a safe and mature
>technology.

There have been 82 shuttle flights to date, of which one has
failed (disastrously); none of the others killed anybody.
A 98.8% success rate, if you will. =8) I don't know if
transatlantic travel in 1900 was that dangerous, but I
wouldn't be surprised if it was that bad around 1800.
Does anyone have any figures?

Further, the cause of the Challenger accident is known and
presumably now avoided. By the 1800s, or even centuries
before, sea travel was a mature enough technology that
most problems encountered were not that easily avoidable:
storms, poor navigation (prior to the invention of the
marine chronometer), etc. Space travel is more demanding
and less forgiving of error, but far, far more predictable
than sea travel.

--
Wim Lewis * wi...@hhhh.org * Seattle, WA, USA
PGP 0x27F772C1: 0C 0D 10 D5 FC 73 D1 35 26 46 42 9E DC 6E 0A 88

[Elisabeth Carey]

PMccutc103 <pmccu...@aol.com> wrote in article
<19970212190...@ladder01.news.aol.com>...

<snip>

> Right. And now all the people who wait five seconds to start drinking
> their coffee and those who like their coffee real hot (like me, actually)
> get coffee that's too cold. That really made society better off. Just
as
> it's made society better off to keep women who have had mastectomies from
> getting silicone breast implants.

BZZZT!

There was never an absolute ban, even at the height of the outrage over the
fact that Dow Corning had fabricated data rather than perform actual tests.
The ban was on the use of silicone implants for cosmetic surgery; they were
always available for reconstructive surgery. Since then, of course, the
required testing has been done, demonstrating just how foolish Dow Corning
was not to have done the testing to begin with - because as it turns out,
silicone breast implants *are* safe, within any reasonable limits, and if
valid test results had been available all along, they wouldn't be facing
any lawsuits, and wouldn't have had those years of very expensive bad
publicity.

Lis Carey

[Elisabeth Carey]

LAL <let...@llnl.gov> wrote in article
<lettis1-ya0234800...@128.115.14.1>...

<snip>

> Ack. I refer you to the Shakespear quote re the proper disposal of
Lawyers . . .

Go take a look at the play. *Shakespeare* puts that suggestion into the
mouth a villain, who goes on to suggest as a further step the elimination
of *all* literate people.

Lis Carey

[John McCarthy]

In article <5dqt3c$t...@news.microsoft.com> edwr...@microsoft.com (Edward Wright) writes:
>
> In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>, j...@Steam.stanford.edu
> says...
>
> >Aircraft are subject to single-point failures. All it takes is one
> >bomb. The design of the Shuttle involved as much redundancy as could
> >be afforded. Space exploration to date has proved less dangerous than
> >the arctic and high mountain exploration of the previous two
> >centuries.
>
> Several astronauts, including the former head of the NASA astronaut
> office, John Young, have disputed this. NASA spent over $35 billion on the
> Shuttle, yet the Shuttle didn't even have a drag chute for landing, until
> after the Challenger accident. It's hard to argue, with a straight face,
> that it was because NASA couldn't afford one.
>
> >Some people are braver that Pickrell evidently thinks they ought to be.
>
> Bravery has nothing to do with it. NASA granted itself more than 800
> Criticality 1 (non-redundant) safety waivers on the Space Shuttle. No
> safety waivers were allowed in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, or Skyalb
> programs. That's not because the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo astronauts
> were less brave.

Do you seriously think NASA's safety waivers put astronauts in as much
danger as 17th thru early 20th century were? Scott and his entire
expedition to the South Pole perished - to take a 20th century
example.

Do you think John Young was claiming any such thing?
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

[PMccutc103]

"Elisabeth Carey" <lis....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

>> it's made society better off to keep women who have had mastectomies
from
>> getting silicone breast implants.
>
>BZZZT!
>
>There was never an absolute ban, even at the height of the outrage over
the

The litigation risks constitute a de facto absolute ban.

>fact that Dow Corning had fabricated data rather than perform actual
tests.

Dow Corning hired independent labs to do testing. Some of them apparently
fudged. There has never been any evidence that Dow Corning knew about
this or had any part in it. Further, silicone had been used in various
other types of prosthetic devices prior to breast implants and there was
never evidence that it caused any medical problems.

>The ban was on the use of silicone implants for cosmetic surgery; they
were

You are correct that the FDA banned the use of implants only for cosmetic
surgery. But even _that_ action lacked a scientific basis and contributed
to the feeding frenzy of sleazy plaintiff's lawyers. My point was that
the tort system makes it impossible for a woman to buy a silicone gel
breast implant for any reason even if she voluntarily waives any and all
risks known and unknown and even if she does it after having been warned
of any possible danger. Today.

>always available for reconstructive surgery. Since then, of course, the
>required testing has been done, demonstrating just how foolish Dow
Corning
>was not to have done the testing to begin with - because as it turns out,

They did want the testing done.

>silicone breast implants *are* safe, within any reasonable limits, and if
>valid test results had been available all along, they wouldn't be facing
>any lawsuits, and wouldn't have had those years of very expensive bad
>publicity.

That, I think, is wrong. The lawsuits were not initiated as a result of
problems in the testing for the simple reason that problems were
discovered in discovery -- after some lawsuits had already been filed.
Because of these problems, there was a brief period when you could say
that evidence was inconclusive -- that neither side had great evidence
their way. Even then, there was never any real scientific evidence that
they caused problems, and what evidence did exist helped Dow Corning.

Honestly, I really doubt that better evidence would have helped Dow
Corning that much. The lawsuits were initiated because plaintiff's
lawyers were able to come up with "experts" who claimed that any and all
maladies, some of which are real and some of which are imagined, are
caused by the breast implants. You are right, though, that problems with
the testing did make Dow Corning more vulnerable and probably increased
the number of lawsuits. It certainly gave the media something to blather
about. But it didn't cause the initial spate of lawsuits.

One reason that I don't think that having better studies would have helped
Dow Corning that much is that the epidemiological studies didn't help them
that much. These studies became available later and Dow Corning could
hardly be faulted for not doing them because they required that
researchers follow a bunch of women with implants for ten or fifteen
years. These studies demonstrated pretty conclusively that breast
implants are not a problem. Despite this near-conclusive evidence, the
lawsuits did not go away. In fact, Dow actually _lost_ a big lawsuit
_after_ the New England Journal of Medicine article. And silicone gel
breast implants are not going to be returning to the market.
________________________

Pete McCutchen

[Cathy Mancus]

In <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>, j...@Steam.stanford.edu (John McCarthy) writes:
>Scott and his entire expedition to the South Pole perished - to take
>a 20th century example.

Only because he was grossly incompetent. We've already beaten
that subject to death.

--Cathy Mancus <man...@vnet.ibm.com>

[Zak Cramer]

>Scott A. Munro wrote:

>>Someone within the last few years wrote a fictional "response" to
>>Godwin's story called "The Cold Solutions." The solution the pilot
>>came up with is to hack various body parts off herself and the
>>stowaway and eject them, thus allowing both to live.

I don't know what story you refer to, but in Charles Sheffield's
recently published collection "Georgia On My Mind" there is a
story (I can't remember it's title) which proposes a similar
solution - hacking off limbs. But the situation isn't that of a
stowaway ... he adds other interesting elements to the story.
I don't want to give any spoilers here, so I'll leave it at that.
Zak

[FIDO]

John McCarthy writes:

Scott and his entire expedition to the South Pole perished
- to take a 20th century example.

"Entire expedition"? Come now. Five who were the final assault
party. A monument to stupidity and hubris. Talk about safety
waivers ... Shackleton and Nansen wrote the ObBooks on polar
exploration.

FIDO

[Zak Cramer]

>John McCarthy (j...@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
>: error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would _The

>: Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a
>: rowboat?

Perhaps it would. But "The Cold Equations" is interesting not only in
the point it makes about physical law being what it is whether we like

it or not, but also in that this becomes more and more an issue for us
the farther removed we are from the safe confines of our homes .......
..... those ancient Phonecians or Greeks that set out into a dark and
unknown sea were brave men, and so also will be those who will set
forth leaving this safe blue sphere of our human origins and voyage
into the vast deep. - Zak

[Allen Thomson]

In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu> j...@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:

[snip]

>
>Do you seriously think NASA's safety waivers put astronauts in as much

>danger as 17th thru early 20th century were? Scott and his entire

>expedition to the South Pole perished - to take a 20th century
>example.
>

>Do you think John Young was claiming any such thing?
>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Well, perhaps it would be useful to do, or at least think about,
arithmetic. If a person takes a trip on the Shuttle, that person
has about a 1% chance of dying during the trip. What was the chance
of dying during an expedition in the period you mention?

[pat]

In article <5dv4vo$l...@mufasa.harvard.edu>,
zcr...@warren.med.harvard.edu says...

Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.

now godwin would have one of the three get thrown overboard.
Gene krantz decided otherwise.

any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
is a joke. when a B-17 lost 2 engines, it was heading down.
the crew would dump everything to delay the inevitable long
enough to get over land.

[Scott Rychnovsky]

In article <01bc1960$2f33a5c0$b4ea...@cathouse.worldnet.att.net>,
"Elisabeth Carey" <lis....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> > it's made society better off to keep women who have had mastectomies from
> > getting silicone breast implants.
>

> BZZZT!
>
> There was never an absolute ban, even at the height of the outrage over the

> fact that Dow Corning had fabricated data rather than perform actual tests.

... and if

> valid test results had been available all along, they wouldn't be facing
> any lawsuits, and wouldn't have had those years of very expensive bad
> publicity.

Excuse me, but do we live in the same country? What do "valid test
results" have to do with legal liability? Isn't this the country where a
jury awarded ca. $7,000,000 to a woman with whose child suffered birth
defects? The guilty party: Ortho Pharmaceuticals who produced the
spermicidal jelly that she had used in an attempt to avoid her pregnancy.
My understanding is that that award was made not because the product
failed to do its job (which is true after all) but that it CAUSED the
birth defects in the first place. The complete lack of evidence that this
was even remotely possible did not protect Ortho Pharmaceuticals from this
irrational award. It would be nice if there were some connection between
scientific evidence and legal liability, but I have not seen it yet.

Scott Rychnovsky

--
Scott Rychnovsky
sryc...@uci.edu

[LAL]

In article <01bc1960$ab0c5c00$b4ea...@cathouse.worldnet.att.net>,
"Elisabeth Carey" <lis....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

As you also know, Shakespear often put his best lines in the mouths of
villains. Doesn't mean the sentiments aren't correct.

As for eliminating _*all* literate people_ it's too early in the _literacy_
sweepstakes to judge evolutionary results (what else counts?) either
positive or negative re literacy (only been, oh, about 2500 years out of
about 150,000 for us Homo Sapiens). Elimination may turn out correct after
all. Lets check again in about 25,000 more years. (However, some have
already jumped the judgment gun, and are apparently attempting to eliminate
literacy among our children through "improved" teaching methods.)

PS Will himself spelled his name in numerous different ways, including
Shakespear - I judge the currently "accepted" _Shakespeare_ to be more
conformist than correct. <grin> (But damn if the spelling checker doesn't
agree with you - stupid Microsoft software, has no historical sense.)

[Linda J. Anderson]

In <5dqn31$c...@bolt.Lakeheadu.Ca> wbu...@geraldton.lakeheadu.ca
(William Burns) writes:
>
>Warning: Spoilers included for the few (very few?) who have _not_
>read 'The Cold Equations'.

>Many of the arguments that were raised when this story first appeared
>are brought up again, along with one new one. (New to me, that is.)
>And that is the rather modern idea that people are not responsible for
>their own actions.
>
(snippage
>Everyone on board the passenger liner had been warned of the
>consequences of stowing away on these emergency ships. Signs were
>posted warning them away. From memory, every passenger was given
>literature explaining the reasons for this. And the young lady still
>decided to sneak aboard in full knowledge that she would be killed.

(and more snippage)

This isn't the way I remember the story. I'm sure that she *didn't*
know she would be killed. I think she believed that she was committing
a light-hearted prank and that she'd only have to pay a fine or
something. She wanted to see her brother didn't she?
LindaA

[Graham Wills]

I tried hard to get a refernce to this, but the original article I read
was a while ago in the New York Times and I cannot get at it on the net.

This is pretty much just some more factual information about the
McDonalds spilled hot coffee case.

PMccutc103 wrote:

> Yes, but she still had the _hot coffee_ strategically placed between her
> legs, so that when it spilled it could get to more of her body. And she
> still knew it was hot and had some obligation to open the lid with care.

You phrase this as if you believe she deliberatley intended to mutilate
herself. I don't believe that line of defense was ever mentioned at the
trial or afterwards.

> >main reason for the high punitive damages award against McDonalds was
> >because McDonalds had been hit several times before for selling its
> >coffee at too high a temperature. (Evidently, the coffee needs to be
> >brewed at a high temperature, but must be served at a decidedly lower
> >temperature -- McDonalds was simply unwilling to delay their
>
> "Must" be sold at that lower temperature according to the plaintiff's
> lawyer. The coffee that comes out of my coffee maker emerges at 183
> degrees -- three degrees hotter than McDonalds is alleged to have sold its
> coffee.

I believe they were in contravention of a real live law - not just a
lawyer's opinion. McDonalds had not just received complaints from
customers, but had been legally warned that they were in contravention
of the law. They apparently ignored these warninigs.

> Face it: the lady was being a dipshit. That's OK. The other day I cut my
> finger while using a knife carelessly; I was being a dipshit. The
> difference is that I don't sue the knife company for my own idiocy.

The lady didn't sue them for her spilling the coffee, she sued them for
selling a dangerously hot substance and putting her in danger. The issue
is that if the coffee was at a legal temperature, she would not have
been harmed and would not have a case.

the reason the initial settlment was so large (it was twice reduced to
around $400K on appeal, of which over $200K went on legal and medical
fees, leaving a banal $200K), was because McDonalds refused to correct
their known problem.

> Or it could be that the customers want coffee hot enough so that they can
> wait a minute or so before drinking and still have it be drinkable.

Maybe they want it, but they can't have it because the danger to stupid
people is too great. The law protects them, too. I have a young son and
if I were to be involved in an accident which caused illegaly hot coffee
to be spilt on my son's face, I would consider the vendor to be at
fault.

> >presented with these facts, and decided to send McDonalds a message
> >the only way it could: in the pocketbook. Guess what? It worked.
> >McDonalds finally changed its coffee-making procedures. This example,
>
> Right. And now all the people who wait five seconds to start drinking
> their coffee and those who like their coffee real hot (like me, actually)
> get coffee that's too cold. That really made society better off.

Better off? Dunno. Safer? Yes.

> It's not _as_ stupid as it's made out to be, but it's still a pretty
> stupid case. By the way, one of the aspects of the legal system that
> _did_ work in this case, or worked some, was the appellate process. The
> punitive damages were reduced on appeal. She didn't get the five million
> she was awarded by the jury.

Right.

> The problem is that despite having very highly paid lawyers, large
> corporations run into a signficant anti-corporate bias. The "evil
> corporation" is a stock figure in Hollywood these days, and juries are
> quite willing to make the big guy pay even when he's done nothing wrong.
> Witness the breast implant litigation.

Yep.

-Graham
--
Graham Wills Data Visualization
gwi...@research.bell-labs.com Bell Laboratories

[James S. Partridge]

mcgu...@ll.mit.edu (Bruce McGuffin) wrote:

>Jim Partridge wrote:

[snip]

> TWEEET! Reality check. If you read this in a newspaper, the
> newspaper was wrong. I kept copies of California Lawyer with
> explainations of the case because this is invariably the case that
> people use to show that our legal system is "out of control," but they
> always get the facts wrong. The woman was not driving through traffic
> at the time of the injury, she was parked. The coffee spilled because
> the lid to the cup did not open correctly (the little "pop top" that's
> supposed to tear off wouldn't tear), and when the lady tried to open
> the thing, the top popped off with a jolt, causing the spill. The

> main reason for the high punitive damages award against McDonalds was
> because McDonalds had been hit several times before for selling its
> coffee at too high a temperature. (Evidently, the coffee needs to be
> brewed at a high temperature, but must be served at a decidedly lower
> temperature -- McDonalds was simply unwilling to delay their

> assembly-line by instituting procedures that would have set the coffee
> aside long enough to cool to a safe temperature.) The jury was

> presented with these facts, and decided to send McDonalds a message
> the only way it could: in the pocketbook. Guess what? It worked.
> McDonalds finally changed its coffee-making procedures. This example,

> outrageous when you get the 3rd hand newspaper reports, is acturally a
> counter-example to your thesis. This is an example of the American
> legal system working, and working well.

>Yes, by golly, it works very well. A friend of mine who owns a
>McDonald's franchise in Connecticut tells me that another spilled
>coffee lawsuit is brought against him on average every one to two
>weeks. His insurance company settles for a few thousand dollars (less
>than it would cost to fight the suit in court, assuming he wins), then
>raises his rates. The plaintiff's lawyer gets 1/3 (or more) of the
>settlement. Can you say barratry? Good, I thought you could. How about
>extortion?

Well, I could go a couple of ways here, but I think I'll opt for
personal experience. I used to do insurance defense. One of the
clients that one of my former employers had was McDonalds. They do
not settle claims for nuisance value. I once litigated a case up to
trial (a junior partner took it to trial) on a slip-and-fall in a
McDonalds that could have been settled for less than $5,000.
McDonalds paid WELL more than that in defense attorneys' fees alone,
let alone all of the other costs attendant upon litigating the case.
From my own experience then, I believe your friend is pulling your
chain.

Jim.

[James S. Partridge]

let...@llnl.gov (LAL) wrote:

>In article <5drqbf$3...@camel0.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com wrote:

><bullshit cut>

>> The jury was

>> presented with these facts, and decided to send McDonalds a message
>> the only way it could: in the pocketbook. Guess what? It worked.
>> McDonalds finally changed its coffee-making procedures. This example,
>> outrageous when you get the 3rd hand newspaper reports, is acturally a
>> counter-example to your thesis. This is an example of the American
>> legal system working, and working well.

>bullshit again - all that happened is someone dumped hot coffee on their

>crotch and now I can't buy coffee at McDonalds that's hot enough to make it
>to the parking lot still drinkable, much less down the road a bit.

Don't let facts get in the way of your opinion, eh?

>as you explained earlier in the post, the lady was having trouble opening
>the lid? so she dumped the coffee in her lap? and it's big Macs fault? and
>the reason is a few other worms out of some umpteen trillion Mac coffee
>drinkers did something similar and tried for Mac's brass ring before she
>did?

The lid to the cup was defective. Coupled with the fact that the
coffee was hot enough to do injury, then yes, it was McDonalds' fault.

>Lawyers should be required to take a course in symbolic logic and Boolean
>algebra while at the university, and university physics through E&M, so
>they might have some clue about cause and effect. Pretty simple concept to
>some, but obviously not to others.

Not to you, evidently.

>I wonder if I can zap Burger King if I get hit by a meteor in their parking
>lot. I guess first we need to notify BK a couple of times that not roofing
>their lot with armour plate is endangering patrons? OK, Burger King, you've
>been so warned in a public forum. Be aware.

Sigh. Did BK create the meteor as McD's did the coffee? You were
saying something about logic earlier. Ever try using it yourself?

>Ack. I refer you to the Shakespear quote re the proper disposal of Lawyers . . .

Don't know much about Shakespear, either, then? Read the scene in
context. Here's a hint: is it the hero that utters the line to which
you refer, or someone else?

Jim.

[James S. Partridge]

Ron Hardin <r...@research.att.com> wrote:

>What happened instead that juries began to ``send a message'' to
>manufacturers, whenever anybody sued, and the price of a lawsuit
>began to take over the field, instead of occuring at natural
>rates in natural amounts for the injury. Awarding more than the
>natural amount for the injury ruins the balance.

Just a note: punitive damages predate product liability theories of
tort recovery by a wide margin. The express purpuses of punitive
damages are to punish and to "send a message," be that message be
directed to McDonalds, Ford (remember the Pinto case?) or O.J.

Jim.

[James S. Partridge]

pmccu...@aol.com (PMccutc103) wrote:

> ji...@pipeline.com (James S. Partridge) wrote:

[cogent spring-gun discussion snipped]

>There _are_ some really dumb cases out there. But they're not quite as
>dumb as they are made out to be. And, in a lot of cases, the claims
>themselves would be valid if true, but the plaintiff's lawyers and their
>"experts" are able to fool the fact-finder. For example, breast implants
>are almost certainly _not_ responsible for the whole host of maladies that
>they are alleged to have caused. But try telling that to a jury.

Well, I'm not sure you want to open this can of worms, but I was
involved in the breast implant litigation early on, so I still follow
the issues a little more closely that most. Having said that, I think
that you are *probably* correct in your assesment, but definitive
proof re: breast implant syndrome has yet to be discovered. The large
punitive damages awarded to date have more to do with industry
malfeasance. There was, for example, evidence that the results of the
only industry study (that's right, only one study done before implants
were marketed) were intentionally destroyed when they showed adverse
health consequences to the test subjects.

>>>was, probably, more widely reported, was when the elderly woman
>>>spilled hot coffee upon herself and successfully sued the chain that
>>>sold her the coffee. That she was guiding her vehicle through
>>>traffic, thereby (at least once) removing both hands from the steering
>>>wheel (unless she opened it with her teeth - still unsafe) was
>>>reported, but was seemingly ignored.
>>
>>TWEEET! Reality check. If you read this in a newspaper, the
>>newspaper was wrong. I kept copies of California Lawyer with

>Note though that the California Lawyer has its own axe to grind in this
>matter.

Less of one than you imply. California Lawyer is a publication of the
State Bar, and is hardly an organ of the plaintiffs' bar. And before
you say, "Well, they're all lawyers, anyway," I would note that most
defense attorneys and corporate attorneys (in-house councel & the
like) share your attitude, not mine. That was one of the reasons I'm
no longer an insurance defense attorney.

However, in all fairness, your criticism turns out to be valid. After
reflection, I believe that the article I refer to was not in
California Lawyer, but in Trial, the magazine of the ATLA. 'Nuff
said. IIRC, the author was the plaintiff's attorney who litigated the
McDonalds case, who of course also has an axe to grind. On the other
hand, its right from the horse's mouth, rather than third hand through
some reporter who, as you note, often fails to get things right.

>>explainations of the case because this is invariably the case that
>>people use to show that our legal system is "out of control," but they
>>always get the facts wrong. The woman was not driving through traffic
>>at the time of the injury, she was parked. The coffee spilled because
>>the lid to the cup did not open correctly (the little "pop top" that's
>>supposed to tear off wouldn't tear), and when the lady tried to open
>>the thing, the top popped off with a jolt, causing the spill. The

>Yes, but she still had the _hot coffee_ strategically placed between her
>legs,

No, it was in her hands while she was sitting at the wheel while her
car was parked.

>so that when it spilled it could get to more of her body. And she
>still knew it was hot and had some obligation to open the lid with care.

As stated, the plastic lid top wouldn't tear open as it was designed
to. I believe that McDonalds had the opportunity to argue that she
was contributorily negligent. The triers of fact decided on that one.

>>main reason for the high punitive damages award against McDonalds was
>>because McDonalds had been hit several times before for selling its
>>coffee at too high a temperature. (Evidently, the coffee needs to be
>>brewed at a high temperature, but must be served at a decidedly lower
>>temperature -- McDonalds was simply unwilling to delay their

>"Must" be sold at that lower temperature according to the plaintiff's
>lawyer.

And the jury.

>The coffee that comes out of my coffee maker emerges at 183
>degrees -- three degrees hotter than McDonalds is alleged to have sold its
>coffee.

I don't recall the exact temperature alledged in the case. I do
remember that the burns resulting from the spill were pretty severe.

>Now you're right; I don't drink it immediately or rub it on my
>flesh straigh out of the machine. I let it cool. There is no question
>that coffee should cool before being consumed.
>The question, though, is whether the _customer_, who presumably knows how
>hot he or she likes the coffee

. . .but is unable to order it any other way than as it comes from the
McDonalds crew . . .

>should get the coffee hot and then allow it
>to cool to the preferred temperature or whether McDonalds should pre-cool
>the coffee so it can be consumed immediately. Actually, so it _must_ be
>consumed immediately, because pre-cooled coffee will get _cold_ fast.

You know, when I go to McDonalds, I eat and drink whatever I order
immediately. Isn't that the point of a place like McDonalds? If I
want to savor a really good cuppa joe, McD's isn't the place I'd head.
I'd bet that a vast majority of folks who go there do the same. Now,
who should McDonalds gear their production line for? The 99% that
grab what they want and consume it immediately, or the 1% that waits a
while to enjoy the elegant atmosphere?

>I think that I'm smart enough to know that fresh hot coffee should be
>given a chance to cool. I'm a big boy, so I can decide how hot I want my
>coffee to be whne I drink it.

But at McDonalds, you don't have any such choice.

>I know this when I'm making coffee at home,
>and I know it when I order coffee out. Fresh coffee is hot. People know
>that, or they ought to know it.

There's a difference between "hot -- will burn the roof of your mouth"
and "hot -- will cause 2nd degree burns."

>Face it: the lady was being a dipshit. That's OK. The other day I cut my
>finger while using a knife carelessly; I was being a dipshit. The
>difference is that I don't sue the knife company for my own idiocy.

No, the lady was being a consumer, a perhaps related category of human
being. McDonalds is in the business of providing food to consumers.
She did nothing that McDonalds didn't know she would do. In fact,
contrary to popular belief, she was parked and using both hands when
trying to open the cup, and it made little difference in that case
that she was in her car rather than seated inside on a plastic bench.

>>assembly-line by instituting procedures that would have set the coffee
>>aside long enough to cool to a safe temperature.) The jury was

>Or it could be that the customers want coffee hot enough so that they can
>wait a minute or so before drinking and still have it be drinkable.

See above.

>>presented with these facts, and decided to send McDonalds a message
>>the only way it could: in the pocketbook. Guess what? It worked.
>>McDonalds finally changed its coffee-making procedures. This example,

>Right. And now all the people who wait five seconds to start drinking
>their coffee and those who like their coffee real hot (like me, actually)
>get coffee that's too cold. That really made society better off. Just as
>it's made society better off to keep women who have had mastectomies from
>getting silicone breast implants.

Now, Pete, that's quite a stretch. I seriously doubt that you like
your coffee so hot that it will give you 2nd degree burns. As for
breast implants, saline implants (a much safer technology -- I'd go
into why, but this is already way too long a post) are available.

>>outrageous when you get the 3rd hand newspaper reports, is acturally a
>>counter-example to your thesis. This is an example of the American
>>legal system working, and working well.

>It's not _as_ stupid as it's made out to be, but it's still a pretty
>stupid case.

Well, we may have to agree to disagree. I'd take this case. Just
because the mechanism of an injury is humorous or seems at first blush
to be foolish doesn't lessen the pain the victim has suffered nor does
it diminish the amount of medical bills she has had to pay.

>By the way, one of the aspects of the legal system that
>_did_ work in this case, or worked some, was the appellate process. The
>punitive damages were reduced on appeal. She didn't get the five million
>she was awarded by the jury.

I don't think the jury award was reduced on appeal. I think the trial
judge issued a remitittur (sp? its late). I don't recall the amount
she was originally awarded, but IIRC, the figure represented the
amount of money McDonalds makes on coffee sales in the United States
in one day. I think the amount set by the trial court was something
like $800 K.

>>
>>>Yet - despite what the present day American courts have decided -
>>>people _are_ responsible for their own actions. As was the young lady
>>>in 'The Cold Equations'. Her surviving family would have had no
>>>legitimate reason, at the time the story was written, to initiate a
>>>civil suit. In todays world, of course, this is not true. More's the
>>>pity.
>>
>>On the contrary, the present day American courts hold all, including
>>large corporations like McDonalds, responsible for their actions. (If

>The problem is that despite having very highly paid lawyers, large
>corporations run into a signficant anti-corporate bias.

Depends on the jurisdiction, or sometimes even on the judicial
district. An emotional anti-corporate appeal will work in some
counties, and backfire badly in others, which have just as deep-seated
biases against "whiney plaintiffs that are driving up our insurance
rates by making frivolous claims." That is to say, much the attitude
I'm encountering here.

>The "evil
>corporation" is a stock figure in Hollywood these days,

A pet peeve of mine. Did you notice how you just knew that the bad
guy in "Twister" was a real scumbucket because "He got himself some
CORPORATE sponsers." I about left the theater.

>and juries are
>quite willing to make the big guy pay even when he's done nothing wrong.
>Witness the breast implant litigation.

Well, Dow Corning *did* do some pretty scummy things. Doesn't mean
that silicone causes the problems ascribed to it, of course.

>>McDonalds could have shown that the woman involved was responsable for
>>her injuries, thein the damages she suffered would have been off-set

>By the way, I'm skeptical about her damages. I know, she had medical
>testimony -- but the words "plaintiff's expert" and "lying scumbag" should
>be cross-referenced in the dictionary.

I've worked both sides of the bar, plaintiff and defendant. As far as
medical testimony goes, you're just plain wrong here. Plaintiffs
nearly always use the treating physician as their expert. That is to
say, a doctor whose income is derived from treating patients, not from
testifying in court, and who, more often than not, would really rather
not be there. Defendants' experts often derive a substantial portion
of their income from testifying for defendants. One large plaintiffs'
law firm in this area keeps a list of known defense medical experts so
that they can keep track of inconsistent testimony. Its called the
"defense whore" list.

>My guess is that lure of the
>dollar sign made her pain and suffering seem a lot worse than it was.

You're entited to your guess. The jury saw her and listened to her
treating physicians. I think they're in a better position to judge
than you or I.

>>by the percentage of her fault or eliminated entirely. It was a
>>statistical certainty in the case you cite that someone would be

>So fucking what?

Well, lets see. I know that if I sell a product with an easily-cured
defect, some people will be injured. It will cost me a little bit in
re-training costs to eliminate the defect so that no people will be
injured by my product. But, hey, Pete says "So fucking what?" so it
must be OK. I don't need to change my product. Great -- now I don't
have to spend that re-training money.

>It is a statistical certainty that some people will choke to death on meat
>or other food served in restaurants throughout this country. Does that
>mean the every restaurant must puree the food in order to prevent the
>statistically-certain death?

Now you *are* being disingenious, Pete. Cooling down coffee to a
temperature that will not cause serious burns is hardly the equivalent
of puree-ing food. We're not talking about cooling it down to room
temperature, after all. The stuff can be held at a high, but still
non-dangerous temperature.

Jim.

[Scott Drellishak]

In article <330351...@research.bell-labs.com>,
Graham Wills <gwi...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote:
)[among a great many other things]
)...illegaly hot coffee...

I just wanted to highlight this gem of a phrase. There are laws which
govern the temperature of coffee? Maybe that isolated cabin in the
Rockies isn't such a bad idea after all.
--
/ Scott Drellishak s...@nwlink.com \
| "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." |
| "Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness." |
\ "Dah dweeee, dah-dah-dah dwee, dow!" /

[Avram Grumer]

In article <5drqbf$3...@camel0.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com wrote:

>Now, as to TCE, I believe that in the story it was mentioned that the
>woman had ignored warnings before she stowed away. Under current
>American law, she would have been barred from recovery should those
>warnings have been adequate to inform her of the risk.

In the story, it is made clear that the woman knew that there was a rule
against stowing away, but didn't know the reason for the rule, or the
penalty for breaking it. She thought she would just have to pay a fine.

--
Avram Grumer Home: av...@interport.net
http://www.crossover.com/agrumer Work: agr...@crossover.com

"Homer, the sea isn't wine-colored." "D'oh!"

[Steve Patterson]

I've been patient with this subject for too long...

In article <5dvkkb$a...@camel5.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com (James S. Partridge) says:
>
>pmccu...@aol.com (PMccutc103) wrote:
>
[re: hot coffee at McDonalds restaurants]

>>Now you're right; I don't drink it immediately or rub it on my
>>flesh straigh out of the machine. I let it cool. There is no question
>>that coffee should cool before being consumed.
>>The question, though, is whether the _customer_, who presumably knows how
>>hot he or she likes the coffee
>
>. . .but is unable to order it any other way than as it comes from the
>McDonalds crew . . .

Logic exercise. Complete this syllogism;

a) Hot objects cool off with time and exposure to ambient air.
b) Coffee must be made boiling water, which is hot.
c) ...

[Hint: most six-year-olds can figure this one out. The fact that the plaintiff,
in her majority, could not is indicative of something. The fact that the legal
system could not is indicative of something else.]

>>should get the coffee hot and then allow it
>>to cool to the preferred temperature or whether McDonalds should pre-cool
>>the coffee so it can be consumed immediately. Actually, so it _must_ be
>>consumed immediately, because pre-cooled coffee will get _cold_ fast.
>

>[W]ho should McDonalds gear their production line for? The 99% that

>grab what they want and consume it immediately, or the 1% that waits a
>while to enjoy the elegant atmosphere?

How about leaving that decision to *the consumer*? Ya know, the ones who
are supposed to be the arbiters of the market?

Anyway, since it is much easier for a person in a car to allow take-out
coffee to cool than it is for a person in a car to *heat* cold coffee to
a drinkable temperature, why *shouldn't* McD serve its coffee hot?

>>I think that I'm smart enough to know that fresh hot coffee should be
>>given a chance to cool. I'm a big boy, so I can decide how hot I want my
>>coffee to be whne I drink it.
>
>But at McDonalds, you don't have any such choice.

YES. YOU DO. You can wait three to five minutes (as I do) with the coffee
cup's lid removed before drinking it. Remove the lid while in a stable
posture, not while juggling it over your lap.

"The Company is not responsable for injury or loss of property caused by
improper operation of this product." Do we need to have this printed on
all coffee cups? How about staplers? Computer equipment? Light bulbs?
Why am I having flashbacks to the "BLOOM COUNTY" comic strip, when Steve
Dallas captured a time machine and litigated against just about every
historical figure known, and then returned to a blighted landscape empty
of man and his works because no one wants to do anything for fear of being
liable...

>>Face it: the lady was being a dipshit. That's OK. The other day I cut my
>>finger while using a knife carelessly; I was being a dipshit. The
>>difference is that I don't sue the knife company for my own idiocy.
>
>No, the lady was being a consumer, a perhaps related category of human
>being. McDonalds is in the business of providing food to consumers.
>She did nothing that McDonalds didn't know she would do. In fact,
>contrary to popular belief, she was parked and using both hands when
>trying to open the cup, and it made little difference in that case
>that she was in her car rather than seated inside on a plastic bench.

That depends upon her posture, and where she decided to open that cup.
If she was holding it over her lap, or had it teetering on the dashboard,
then it was her own stupid fault for doing something my mother chastised
me for when I was eight.

>>It is a statistical certainty that some people will choke to death on meat
>>or other food served in restaurants throughout this country. Does that
>>mean the every restaurant must puree the food in order to prevent the
>>statistically-certain death?
>
>Now you *are* being disingenious, Pete. Cooling down coffee to a
>temperature that will not cause serious burns is hardly the equivalent
>of puree-ing food.

YES. IT IS. It is altering the method of preparation of a food to avoid
a small chance of injury due to consumer negligence. An alteration that will adversely
affect the flavour and aroma of the food, when a reasonable amount of care
by the customer can eliminate the hazard.

> We're not talking about cooling it down to room
>temperature, after all. The stuff can be held at a high, but still
>non-dangerous temperature.

And that would be...? What? 160 degrees? 140? 98.4? 32? And how long
must this temperature be maintained? A minute? An hour? A day?

And why should I let *you* tell me what temperature *my* coffee should be?

Why can't *I* decide that for myself?

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Note: My "from:" address has been altered to foil mailbots.
Please use the corrected address appearing below.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Steven J. Patterson spatt...@wwdc.com
W.O.R.L.D.'S....S..L..O..W..E..S..T....W...R...I...T...E...R
"Men may move mountains, but ideas move men."
-- M.N. Vorkosigan, per L.M. Bujold

[Edward Wright]

In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>, j...@Steam.stanford.edu
says...

> > Bravery has nothing to do with it. NASA granted itself more than 800

> > Criticality 1 (non-redundant) safety waivers on the Space Shuttle. No
> > safety waivers were allowed in the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, or Skyalb
> > programs. That's not because the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo astronauts
> > were less brave.

>Do you seriously think NASA's safety waivers put astronauts in as much

>danger as 17th thru early 20th century were? Scott and his entire
>expedition to the South Pole perished - to take a 20th century
>example.

That is irrelevent. Polar explorers -- the good ones, anyway -- did as much
careful planning as possible before the set out. Failure to do that is not
bravery, it's stupidity. Safety standards for space vehicles should be based
on how safe we can make them, at reasonable expense, with current
technology, not on what was acceptable to 17th Century explorers.

Besides, Shuttle astronauts are not explorers. Their mission is to boldy go
where Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab have gone before. They are not
Charles Lindbergh. More like the people who crossed the Atlantic 30 years
after Lindbergh. But no one who crossed the Atlantic in the 1950s faced a
1/100 chance of death.

--
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views
and do not reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation.

[Steve Dirickson]

p...@clark.net (pat) wrote:

>any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
>is a joke. when a B-17 lost 2 engines, it was heading down.
>the crew would dump everything to delay the inevitable long
>enough to get over land.

I don't intend to pick on this specific posting; this theme of "was it
*really really* necessary to space the stowaway?" has come up over and
over again in this thread (and the multitude that preceded it).

Aren't we kind of missing the point? This is a *story*, people! It is
not a drill scanario for space cadets, and it's not some type of
historical account being presented as a lesson--it's a tale, made up
by the author, and the events are simply not negotiable; this is the
way the author wrote it, and this is the way it is. If the story had
ended with
1) A brilliant solution that allowed both pilot and stowaway to
survive unscathed
2) The previously-mentioned "Cold Solutions" resolution of both
surviving, but less than intact
3) Both surviving, but at the cost of dumping the cargo
(critically-needed medical supplies as I recall, though it's been a
while)
4) Something else

then it wouldn't be the same story. It might be thoroughly enjoyable,
hailed as a masterpiece, or it might be a quickly-forgotten bit of
fluff, but it would not be *this* story, and this story is what the
author wrote.

Steve Dirickson WestWin Consulting
(360) 598-6111 sdir...@kpt.nuwc.navy.mil

[Todd D. Ellner]

In article <5e04fa$t...@news.microsoft.com>,

Edward Wright <edwr...@microsoft.com> wrote:
>In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>, j...@Steam.stanford.edu
>says...

::Do you seriously think NASA's safety waivers put astronauts in as much

::danger as 17th thru early 20th century were? Scott and his entire
::expedition to the South Pole perished - to take a 20th century
::example.
>That is irrelevent. Polar explorers -- the good ones, anyway -- did as much
>careful planning as possible before the set out. Failure to do that is not
>bravery, it's stupidity.

It is a pity that Scott was one of the stupid ones. It is even more of
a shame that history lionized him while villifying the real heroes like
Amundsen and Shackleton(sp?).

Todd
--
Todd Ellner | The man who never alters his opinion is like the
tel...@cs.pdx.edu | stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the mind.
(503)557-1572 | --William Blake "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

[dkn...@efn.org]

John McCarthy wrote:
> The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
> been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
> vaccine. There were no phone books.
>
> I can understand that people don't want a story to be based on that
> premise. I feel similarly about Anna Karenina. Tolstoy should have
> written the story so that Anna got psychiatric help in time.

"The Cold Equations," as many people have pointed out, is a cheesy story
because the text does not support its premises. If you add up the mass
of various superfluous things mentioned in the course of the story, it's
easy to show that the girl need not have been jettisoned. I won't give
the whole list here, but start with the pilot's weapon, the rulebook,
and the closet (stowaways, concealment of, Mark VI). :)

Damon

[John McCarthy]

In article <5dvbkl$l...@clarknet.clark.net> p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>
> In article <5dv4vo$l...@mufasa.harvard.edu>,
> zcr...@warren.med.harvard.edu says...
> >
> >
> >
> >>John McCarthy (j...@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
> >>: error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would _The
> >>: Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a
> >>: rowboat?
> >
> >Perhaps it would. But "The Cold Equations" is interesting not only in
> >the point it makes about physical law being what it is whether we like
> >
> >it or not, but also in that this becomes more and more an issue for us
> >the farther removed we are from the safe confines of our homes .......
> >..... those ancient Phonecians or Greeks that set out into a dark and
> >unknown sea were brave men, and so also will be those who will set
> >forth leaving this safe blue sphere of our human origins and voyage
> >into the vast deep. - Zak
> >
> >
> >
>
> Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
> scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
> before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
> accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
> power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
>
> now godwin would have one of the three get thrown overboard.
> Gene krantz decided otherwise.
>

> any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
> is a joke. when a B-17 lost 2 engines, it was heading down.
> the crew would dump everything to delay the inevitable long
> enough to get over land.
>

The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had

been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
vaccine. There were no phone books.

I can understand that people don't want a story to be based on that
premise. I feel similarly about Anna Karenina. Tolstoy should have
written the story so that Anna got psychiatric help in time.

[Elisabeth Carey]

LAL <let...@llnl.gov> wrote in article
<lettis1-ya0234800...@128.115.14.1>...
> In article <01bc1960$ab0c5c00$b4ea...@cathouse.worldnet.att.net>,
> "Elisabeth Carey" <lis....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > LAL <let...@llnl.gov> wrote in article
> > <lettis1-ya0234800...@128.115.14.1>...
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > > Ack. I refer you to the Shakespear quote re the proper disposal of
> > Lawyers . . .
> >
> > Go take a look at the play. *Shakespeare* puts that suggestion into the
> > mouth a villain, who goes on to suggest as a further step the
elimination
> > of *all* literate people.
>
> As you also know, Shakespear often put his best lines in the mouths of
> villains. Doesn't mean the sentiments aren't correct.

Shakespeare often does put important statements in the mouths of villians,
but that's not the case in this instance. In *this* instance, we're quickly
shown a very ordinary man, a distinctly unprosperous clerk, being murdered
because he's literate and therefore obviously one of the "oppressors".
Don't take my word for it; go read the scene. Go read the entire play.

>
> As for eliminating _*all* literate people_ it's too early in the
_literacy_
> sweepstakes to judge evolutionary results (what else counts?) either
> positive or negative re literacy (only been, oh, about 2500 years out of
> about 150,000 for us Homo Sapiens). Elimination may turn out correct
after
> all. Lets check again in about 25,000 more years. (However, some have
> already jumped the judgment gun, and are apparently attempting to
eliminate
> literacy among our children through "improved" teaching methods.)

And do you really think Shakespeare had this in mind? Do you really think
that Shakespeare, poet and playwright, considered literacy evidence of
villainy?

>
> PS Will himself spelled his name in numerous different ways, including
> Shakespear - I judge the currently "accepted" _Shakespeare_ to be more
> conformist than correct. <grin> (But damn if the spelling checker doesn't
> agree with you - stupid Microsoft software, has no historical sense.)

My emphasis on Shakespeare's name was intended as an emphasis on the name,
and the fact that your interpretion of his line doesn't match the way he
actually used it in the play. It wasn't intended as a rebuke to your
misspelling.

It's quite true that in the six surviving signatures we have, he spelled
his name three different ways. However, deliberately and affectedly using a
spelling of the name that's non-standard today is not going to impress
anyone with your "historical sense". In Shakespeare's day, spelling wasn't
standardized; today it *is*, and using nonstandard spellings creates an
impression of ignorance, not knowledge.

Lis Carey

[Zak Cramer]

p...@clark.net (pat) wrote:
>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
>scenario.

Not always - or, at least, not yet.

The entry in The Encyclopedia of SF isn't full of details
(and I can't remember it very well) but I believe T. Godwin
died of some horrible disease ....

If we could ALWAYS alter the scenario, then no one on Earth would
be hungry, no one would die, and I wouldn't have to go to work every
day and waste my life on vacuous activities like reading usenet.

Still, though, I take your point - we should be optimists until we are

dead. It's not over till it's over.

- Zak

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

On 13 Feb 1997 23:09:45 GMT, no_spam_s...@wwdc.com (Steve
Patterson) wrote:

>> We're not talking about cooling it down to room
>>temperature, after all. The stuff can be held at a high, but still
>>non-dangerous temperature.
>
>And that would be...? What? 160 degrees? 140? 98.4? 32? And how long
>must this temperature be maintained? A minute? An hour? A day?

140 degrees. That's scalding hot, and the normal temperature at which
coffee is served, still too hot for normal people to drink.
Temperature is measured at the point of dispensing. McDonald's
doesn't make each cup fresh; they HOLD it in a thermostatic container,
like every other fast-food chain.

The difference is that every other fast-food chain set the thermostat
at 140. McDonald's was serving their coffee at 180 degrees, which is
illegal, because it is MUCH hotter than anyone expects coffee to be.

Why are you assuming that there are no answers to this stuff, and that
McDonald's was innocent?

TOUCHED BY THE GODS: Hardcover, Tor Books, November 1997
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Updated 11/17/96
Beyond Comics opens 2/22/97 at Lakeforest Mall, Gaithersburg MD

[pat]

In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>,
j...@Steam.stanford.edu says...
>

>In article <5dvbkl$l...@clarknet.clark.net> p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
> >
> > In article <5dv4vo$l...@mufasa.harvard.edu>,
> > zcr...@warren.med.harvard.edu says...
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >>John McCarthy (j...@Steam.stanford.edu) wrote:
> > >>: error, and that everyone ought to know that. Would _The
> > >>: Cold Equations_ have the same effect if it was set in a
> > >>: rowboat?
> > >
> > >Perhaps it would. But "The Cold Equations" is interesting not only
in
> > >the point it makes about physical law being what it is whether we
like
> > >
> > >it or not, but also in that this becomes more and more an issue for
us
> > >the farther removed we are from the safe confines of our homes
.......
> > >..... those ancient Phonecians or Greeks that set out into a dark
and
> > >unknown sea were brave men, and so also will be those who will set
> > >forth leaving this safe blue sphere of our human origins and voyage
> > >into the vast deep. - Zak
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >

> > Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the

> > scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
> > before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
> > accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
> > power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
> >
> > now godwin would have one of the three get thrown overboard.
> > Gene krantz decided otherwise.
> >
> > any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
> > is a joke. when a B-17 lost 2 engines, it was heading down.
> > the crew would dump everything to delay the inevitable long
> > enough to get over land.
> >
>
>The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
>been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
>vaccine. There were no phone books.
>
>I can understand that people don't want a story to be based on that
>premise. I feel similarly about Anna Karenina. Tolstoy should have
>written the story so that Anna got psychiatric help in time.
>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
>

All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.

One takes a saw or a torch and starts cutting away now un-needed
structure. That blaster is of course a good starting point.

Now limited life support is a much stronger case. X O2 on board,
the vehicle leaks at a certain rate, one consumes at a certain
rate. Now one can modify this by reducing O2 pressure, sealing off
areas, etc....

The basic nihilism of many SF writers is troubling to me.

pat

[pat]

In article <5e1ob0$r...@mufasa.harvard.edu>,
zcr...@warren.med.harvard.edu says...

>
>p...@clark.net (pat) wrote:
>>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
>>scenario.
>

>Not always - or, at least, not yet.
>
>The entry in The Encyclopedia of SF isn't full of details
>(and I can't remember it very well) but I believe T. Godwin
>died of some horrible disease ....
>
>If we could ALWAYS alter the scenario, then no one on Earth would
>be hungry, no one would die, and I wouldn't have to go to work every
>day and waste my life on vacuous activities like reading usenet.
>
>Still, though, I take your point - we should be optimists until we are
>
>dead. It's not over till it's over.
>
> - Zak
>
>

I would point out professional pilots never panic during an
in-flight emergency. the Cockpit Voice Recorder tapes 99%
of the time show them deliberately trying procedures and
analyzing the problem until about a second before impact.

They usually keep working the controls until final impact.

Quitting is for losers.

pat

[Cathy Mancus]

>j...@Steam.stanford.edu says...

>>The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
>>been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
>>vaccine.

In <5e239l$7...@clarknet.clark.net>, p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.

The vehicle in the story was a small craft "launched" in zero-gee
from a mother ship. It never handled takeoff loads.

Of course, this begs the question of whether you really want
to be routinely flying vehicles with so little margins.....

--Cathy Mancus <man...@vnet.ibm.com>

[gram]

pat (p...@clark.net) wrote:
:
: any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,

: is a joke. when a B-17 lost 2 engines, it was heading down.
: the crew would dump everything to delay the inevitable long
: enough to get over land.

:
A B-17 that lost two engines was was _designed_ to have a lot of
capacity for material that could be jettisoned, and the means to
dump it quickly and easily. The B stands for Bomber.

Ward Griffiths

[Gregg Germain]

Cathy Mancus (JHOLL4@) wrote:

: In <5e239l$7...@clarknet.clark.net>, p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
: >All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
: >vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.

: The vehicle in the story was a small craft "launched" in zero-gee
: from a mother ship. It never handled takeoff loads.

Um all it means to be launched in Zero G is that the loading
on the articles inside it was 1 G less than if it were launched from
earth.

I don't know what acceleration the ship had to get away from the
mother ship but THOSE are launch loads and therefore the articles
inside did handle a "takeoff" load.

--- Gregg
Saville
gger...@cfa.harvard.edu #29 Genie
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics #1762 CRIS
Phone: (617) 496-7713 "A Mig at your six is better than
no Mig at all."

[Cathy Mancus]

In <3304b...@cfanews.harvard.edu>, gr...@ncc1701a.harvard.edu (Gregg Germain) writes:

>Cathy Mancus (JHOLL4@) wrote:
>> The vehicle in the story was a small craft "launched" in zero-gee
>> from a mother ship. It never handled takeoff loads.

> Um all it means to be launched in Zero G is that the loading
>on the articles inside it was 1 G less than if it were launched from

>Earth.

> I don't know what acceleration the ship had to get away from the
>mother ship but THOSE are launch loads and therefore the articles
>inside did handle a "takeoff" load.

Sorry, that's oversimplified. There is a reason that launchers
don't accelerate at 1.5 g from Earth; you would waste too much fuel
while deep in the gravity well. It is much more efficient to
accelerate rapidly. The ship that pulled away from the mother
ship could have used very low gee thrust, although I don't remember
the actual amount from the story.

Also, a launch from Earth requires supports that can handle
the loaded weight, extra fuel to handle the aerodynamic drag, etc,
etc. Compare the LM with the Saturn V and you'll see what I mean.

--Cathy Mancus <man...@vnet.ibm.com>

[James S. Partridge]

av...@interport.net (Avram Grumer) wrote:

>In article <5drqbf$3...@camel0.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com wrote:

>>Now, as to TCE, I believe that in the story it was mentioned that the
>>woman had ignored warnings before she stowed away. Under current
>>American law, she would have been barred from recovery should those
>>warnings have been adequate to inform her of the risk.

>In the story, it is made clear that the woman knew that there was a rule
>against stowing away, but didn't know the reason for the rule, or the
>penalty for breaking it. She thought she would just have to pay a fine.

I pulled the anthology that has TCE and re-read the story. You are
correct, the only warning mentioned in the story was a simple
"Unauthorized Persons Keep Out" - type of sign. As the author points
out, on Earth such a sign would hardly be sufficient to put anyone on
notice that their life would be in danger should she ignore it. On a
spacecraft? I don't know, especially if the spacecraft was a "liner"
as it was called in the story, bringing to mind ocean liners. Look at
modern passenger aircraft. One would think that most people are
sufficiently aware of the dangers of high-speed, high-altitude flight
that they would not, for example, open a door over the Atlantic. Even
so, such doors have warnings plastered all over them. As I said
elsewhere, lables don't cost much and can avert accidents.

Jim.

[James S. Partridge]

no_spam_s...@wwdc.com (Steve Patterson) wrote:

>I've been patient with this subject for too long...

>In article <5dvkkb$a...@camel5.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com (James S. Partridge) says:
>>
>>pmccu...@aol.com (PMccutc103) wrote:
>>
>[re: hot coffee at McDonalds restaurants]
>>>Now you're right; I don't drink it immediately or rub it on my
>>>flesh straigh out of the machine. I let it cool. There is no question
>>>that coffee should cool before being consumed.
>>>The question, though, is whether the _customer_, who presumably knows how
>>>hot he or she likes the coffee
>>
>>. . .but is unable to order it any other way than as it comes from the
>>McDonalds crew . . .

>Logic exercise. Complete this syllogism;

>a) Hot objects cool off with time and exposure to ambient air.
>b) Coffee must be made boiling water, which is hot.
>c) ...

>[Hint: most six-year-olds can figure this one out. The fact that the plaintiff,
>in her majority, could not is indicative of something. The fact that the legal
>system could not is indicative of something else.]

Allright, here's one for you:

a) Most McDonalds customers eat and drink their purchases within
minutes of receiving it.
b) McDonalds serves coffee so hot that it can cause serious burns.
c) . . .

Most sic-year-olds could figure this one out as well.

>>>should get the coffee hot and then allow it
>>>to cool to the preferred temperature or whether McDonalds should pre-cool
>>>the coffee so it can be consumed immediately. Actually, so it _must_ be
>>>consumed immediately, because pre-cooled coffee will get _cold_ fast.
>>
>>[W]ho should McDonalds gear their production line for? The 99% that
>>grab what they want and consume it immediately, or the 1% that waits a
>>while to enjoy the elegant atmosphere?

>How about leaving that decision to *the consumer*? Ya know, the ones who
>are supposed to be the arbiters of the market?

>Anyway, since it is much easier for a person in a car to allow take-out
>coffee to cool than it is for a person in a car to *heat* cold coffee to
>a drinkable temperature, why *shouldn't* McD serve its coffee hot?

Because it is impossible to change the eating habits of the public at
large, but it is possible to change the way McDonalds serves its
coffee. If you believe that getting your coffee nice and hot is worth
causing serious burns to, among others, elderly ladies, then I feel
very sorry for you.

>>>I think that I'm smart enough to know that fresh hot coffee should be
>>>given a chance to cool. I'm a big boy, so I can decide how hot I want my
>>>coffee to be whne I drink it.
>>
>>But at McDonalds, you don't have any such choice.

>YES. YOU DO. You can wait three to five minutes (as I do) with the coffee
>cup's lid removed before drinking it. Remove the lid while in a stable
>posture, not while juggling it over your lap.

Once more, for the hard of hearing: she was parked. The car wasn't
moving. She was in a "stable posture," If your point is that no one
should try to open a McDonalds coffee cup while within 5 feet of any
automobile, then I suggest to you that McDonalds needs to redesign its
coffee cup lids.

>"The Company is not responsable for injury or loss of property caused by
>improper operation of this product." Do we need to have this printed on
>all coffee cups? How about staplers? Computer equipment? Light bulbs?
>Why am I having flashbacks to the "BLOOM COUNTY" comic strip, when Steve
>Dallas captured a time machine and litigated against just about every
>historical figure known, and then returned to a blighted landscape empty
>of man and his works because no one wants to do anything for fear of being
>liable...

Warnings are cheap. Injuries are painful and expensive. Warnings can
prevent an injury that would otherwise have happined. You're against
this?

>>>Face it: the lady was being a dipshit. That's OK. The other day I cut my
>>>finger while using a knife carelessly; I was being a dipshit. The
>>>difference is that I don't sue the knife company for my own idiocy.
>>
>>No, the lady was being a consumer, a perhaps related category of human
>>being. McDonalds is in the business of providing food to consumers.
>>She did nothing that McDonalds didn't know she would do. In fact,
>>contrary to popular belief, she was parked and using both hands when
>>trying to open the cup, and it made little difference in that case
>>that she was in her car rather than seated inside on a plastic bench.

>That depends upon her posture, and where she decided to open that cup.
>If she was holding it over her lap, or had it teetering on the dashboard,
>then it was her own stupid fault for doing something my mother chastised
>me for when I was eight.

The lid wouldn't open correctly. When it was supposed to tear, it
didn't and it plopped open, spilling the contents. The jury heard the
evidence, and didn't think she was acting unreasonably. You've heard
about the case third or fourth hand. I trust them, not you to
correctly decide liability issues.

Look, juries aren't perfect, but they're the best we've got. I once
showed a jury color photographs of my client's lacerated scrotum to
prove that he was bitten in the crotch by a german shepherd (the
defendant claimed that the dog hadn't bitten him). One of the jurors
still believed the dog owner in spite of the photographic, eye-witness
and medical testimony. However, the REST of the jury still came in
with a plaintiff's verdict. So yes, juries can sometimes go astray,
but its still better to put the matter to a group of common people who
can exercise their common sense rather than leaving it up to the sole
discretion of judges -- because that is the alternative. And remember
you lawyer-bashers, judges are lawyers before they take the bench.

>>>It is a statistical certainty that some people will choke to death on meat
>>>or other food served in restaurants throughout this country. Does that
>>>mean the every restaurant must puree the food in order to prevent the
>>>statistically-certain death?
>>
>>Now you *are* being disingenious, Pete. Cooling down coffee to a
>>temperature that will not cause serious burns is hardly the equivalent
>>of puree-ing food.

>YES. IT IS. It is altering the method of preparation of a food to avoid
>a small chance of injury due to consumer negligence. An alteration that will adversely
>affect the flavour and aroma of the food, when a reasonable amount of care
>by the customer can eliminate the hazard.

But the consumer in this case was never warned of the hazard in the
first place. And I simply refuse to believe that simply letting the
coffee cool to a degree that it can no longer injure a consumer will
substantially alter its "flavour and aroma." (Of course, in the
interest of being fair, I will admit that I don't drink coffee, so I
can't state this of my own knowledge.)

>> We're not talking about cooling it down to room
>>temperature, after all. The stuff can be held at a high, but still
>>non-dangerous temperature.

>And that would be...? What? 160 degrees? 140? 98.4? 32? And how long
>must this temperature be maintained? A minute? An hour? A day?

I don't know personally. Neither, I presume, do you. However, there
are standards published and health dept. regulations issued, as
another poster alluded to. You going to go to a restaurant that has a
sign up: "This establishment ignores Health Department guidelines"?

>And why should I let *you* tell me what temperature *my* coffee should be?

>Why can't *I* decide that for myself?

You had no more ability to decide for yourself before the decision
than after. McDonalds decided for you. Are you seriously contending
that if you actually had a choice you would choose near-boiling coffee
over coffee just barely cool enough to actually drink?

Jim.

[John Schilling]

p...@clark.net (pat) writes:

>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the

>scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
>before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
>accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
>power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.

And a "simple physical study" shows this?

Bull.

The physics governing human oxygen consumption are far from simple,
and indeed are not particularly amenable to analytical solution.
The rocket equation predicts with as much precision as you care
to ask for, how much propellant will be reqiuired to complete a
particular trip. There is no such equation for oxygen consumption;
certainly nothing along the order of "X men in Y hours consume Z
kilograms of oxygen".

There are statistical approximations. "X men in Y hours will with
99.99% confidence consume between Z1 and Z2 kilograms of oxygen".

And these approximations, applied to the circumstances of the Apollo
13 spacecraft and crew, resulted in a simple, physical *uncertainty*
regarding the survivability of the event. There were insufficient
resources to *guarantee* the survival of three men, but there is
a very large grey area between guaranteed survival and guaranteed
death by asphyxiation.

Apollo 13 was very much like the classic "lifeboat" story, and thus
a nearly absolute opposite of the scenario in _The Cold Equations_.
The former are characterized by a fundamental *un*certainty regarding
the outcome of various strategies, the latter by an absolute certainty.

Which is why Godwin chose propellant, rather than oxygen, as the
limiting factor.

>any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
>is a joke.

Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in
a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
be too difficult a task.

And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.

--
*John Schilling * "You can have Peace, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * or you can have Freedom. *
*University of Southern California * Don't ever count on having both *
*Aerospace Engineering Department * at the same time." *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * - Robert A. Heinlein *
*(213)-740-5311 or 747-2527 * Finger for PGP public key *

[David M. Palmer]

p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
[trimming, and thereby losing all but the top level attribution]

>> > >the point it makes about physical law being what it is whether we like

>> > >it or not...

>> > Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the

>> > scenario. ...

>> > any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,

>> > is a joke....

>>
>>The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
>>been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed

>>vaccine. There were no phone books.

>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe

>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.

Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.

>The basic nihilism of many SF writers is troubling to me.

Actually, the story was written in response to the prevailing Sci-Fi
style of the time, where against impossible odds, the hero pulls
out a miraculous save, sometimes using super-science*. The whole
point of the story is that, _sometimes_, you can't. One unhappy
ending out of thousands of stories should be troubling only because
of its rarity.

*After the villian had encased the three orphans and me in solid rock,
eight miles below the surface, with only three minutes worth of air,
things looked pretty grim. But I noticed that the cavity we were in
intersected a vein of spuzzumite which, as you know, breaks down in the
presence of electricity. I grabbed a comb and ran it through the
tousled mops of the three youngsters, and soon had enough static charge
to clear the way to safety.
--
David M. Palmer
dmpa...@clark.net
http://www.clark.net/pub/dmpalmer/

[Robert Sneddon (SEE .SIG TO REPLY)]

In article <5e0c93$a...@sirius.cs.pdx.edu>

tel...@cs.pdx.edu "Todd D. Ellner" writes:

>
> It is a pity that Scott was one of the stupid ones. It is even more of
> a shame that history lionized him while villifying the real heroes like
> Amundsen and Shackleton(sp?).
>

And the unsung heroes, like Dr. Ray, from the Orkneys, who mapped and
surveyed massive tracts of Canada over a ten year period for the Hudson
Bay Company, and only lost one man, an Esquimaux who drowned. He
wasn't a self-publicist, or articulate, or titled, just a working stiff.
His big mistake that cost him dear was to bring back evidence of the fate
of an "expedition" lead by a titled idiot who died to the last man -
telling of "civilised" people and the cannibalism that was their last
desperate act before their extinction. He was vilified as a credulous
fool, who would take the word of a native, a savage, about their hero's
fate (the "savage" had traded valuable meat for useless (but identifiable)
trinkets to the lost expedition, and tried to give them directions,
which they ignored).

Going into the Unknown can kill you. Space travel is no different
from Polar or naval travel used to be, before powerful steel-hulled
ships, helicopters, satellite navigation systems etc were introduced.
It is dangerous, and AFAIK still totally a volunteer occupation.
The risks are minimised, and they can be reduced further as
knowledge is gained, but as this happens, the Unknown is rolled back.
This always seems to expose more Unknown...

--
*** SPAM BLOCKED ADDRESS *** To reply, remove the string "_nospam_" from
the address above. If you don't, mail will bounce and I'll never see it.
This is done to prevent spammers from junk-emailing me.
Robert (nojay) Sneddon

[pat]

In article <5e31ir$9...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...

>
>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>
>
>>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the

>>scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
>>before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
>>accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
>>power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
>
>
>And a "simple physical study" shows this?

sure. The LEM was designed to support 2 men for 48 hours,
not 3 men for 96. Power, water, Co2 absorption were all
insufficient.

If you went by the book, ensign savik.

>
>Bull.
>
>The physics governing human oxygen consumption are far from simple,
>and indeed are not particularly amenable to analytical solution.
>The rocket equation predicts with as much precision as you care
>to ask for, how much propellant will be reqiuired to complete a
>particular trip. There is no such equation for oxygen consumption;
>certainly nothing along the order of "X men in Y hours consume Z
>kilograms of oxygen".
>
>There are statistical approximations. "X men in Y hours will with
>99.99% confidence consume between Z1 and Z2 kilograms of oxygen".
>
>And these approximations, applied to the circumstances of the Apollo
>13 spacecraft and crew, resulted in a simple, physical *uncertainty*
>regarding the survivability of the event. There were insufficient
>resources to *guarantee* the survival of three men, but there is
>a very large grey area between guaranteed survival and guaranteed
>death by asphyxiation.
>
>
>Apollo 13 was very much like the classic "lifeboat" story, and thus
>a nearly absolute opposite of the scenario in _The Cold Equations_.
>The former are characterized by a fundamental *un*certainty regarding
>the outcome of various strategies, the latter by an absolute certainty.
>
>Which is why Godwin chose propellant, rather than oxygen, as the
>limiting factor.

and even propellant while governed by the rocket equation assumes a
certain fixed mass.

>
>
>>any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,

>>is a joke.
>
>
>Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in
>a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
>"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
>carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
>general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
>manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
>be too difficult a task.
>
>And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
>stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.

Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be limited
to this.

Start with.

1) Seats.
2) Co-pilot controls (Pedals, rudders, yoke, linkages.)
3) Radio Nav stack and com radio stack.
4) all manuals, logbooks, food,water.
5) Fire extinguisher
6) O2 bottles.
7) engine instrumentation.
8) flight instruments except ASI,ALtimeter, climb rate gauge,compass.
9) carpeting
10) garments.

-------

now if you are a real macho stud, and not some whining, crying,
quitter, you get out on the wing and take off the
flaps, drives and linkages. Speed brakes if they are existent.
if that's not enough drop the wheels and landing gear struts.

That is assuming you are macho enough.

the goal is to get the cargo there, the aircraft is disposable.
a belly landing maybe ugly, but it is an acceptable option,

If you are up to the challenge.

------------------

Of course it's far easier to sit there reading magazines and whining
about how hard life is in a university then actually doing the hard
things.

pat

[Dave Edwards]

s...@nwlink.com (Scott Drellishak) wrote:

>In article <330351...@research.bell-labs.com>,
>Graham Wills <gwi...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote:
>)[among a great many other things]
>)...illegaly hot coffee...
>
>I just wanted to highlight this gem of a phrase. There are laws which
>govern the temperature of coffee? Maybe that isolated cabin in the
>Rockies isn't such a bad idea after all.
>--

ObSF
Seems like just the sort of brew Harrison Bergeron would have drunk...

---------------------------------------
Dave Edwards --- dedw...@infoave.net

"Alone and afraid, unable to communicate,unable
to find out what was happening, people waited.
The Network was down." --- Daniel Keys Moran

[William Burns]

ji...@pipeline.com (James S. Partridge) wrote:

>TWEEET! Reality check. If you read this in a newspaper, the
>newspaper was wrong.

Yes - I did read it in a newspaper and in the face of your arguments,
I see that the information it reported was wrong. You didn't happen
to save the legal arguments for the burglar case by any chance? :)

>Indeed, the law in this country has not changed since the story was
>written in the 50's (is that right? its been a while since I read it).

Published August, 1954, in Astounding Science Fiction. Written by Tom
Godwin. As for your laws changing - it sure seems that way.

Back on topic: I like TCE. The author postulated an interesting
situation and came up with a solution that stayed within the
boundaries given. The fun part for everyone is arguing whether
another solution could have been found. At least it was in the 50s.
Mr. Harter laid the legal blame on the bureaucrats and dismissed the
story as both sloppy and shoddy. Sentiments I do not agree with.

Perhaps I should have just posted the original essay to rasw and let
it go at that. :) Hmm.

--William

A man said to the universe,
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation." (Stephen Crane)

[pat]

In article <5e3cct$l...@clark.net>, dmpa...@clark.net says...

>
>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>[trimming, and thereby losing all but the top level attribution]
>>> > >the point it makes about physical law being what it is whether we
like
>>> > >it or not...

>>> > Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the

>>> > scenario. ...

>>> > any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,

>>> > is a joke....
>>>
>>>The premise of _The Cold Equations_ was that all possible weight had
>>>been removed in order that the ship had a chance of bring the needed
>>>vaccine. There were no phone books.
>
>>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
>
>Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
>from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
>its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>

Typical Narrow-minded, failure seeking Aero-space engineer.
Okay, so this is a shuttle, What does it do once it makes
planetary landfall, turn into a gazebo?

when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
a much larger takeoff load.

And in this case, the vehicle is landing, so it's burning fuel
and losing weight and stress during the landing.

I know most aero folks sort of prefer failure, but this is
ridiculous.

>>The basic nihilism of many SF writers is troubling to me.
>
>Actually, the story was written in response to the prevailing Sci-Fi
>style of the time, where against impossible odds, the hero pulls
>out a miraculous save, sometimes using super-science*. The whole
>point of the story is that, _sometimes_, you can't. One unhappy
>ending out of thousands of stories should be troubling only because
>of its rarity.
>

Most of human endeavour is survival against the odds.

>*After the villian had encased the three orphans and me in solid rock,
>eight miles below the surface, with only three minutes worth of air,
>things looked pretty grim. But I noticed that the cavity we were in
>intersected a vein of spuzzumite which, as you know, breaks down in the
>presence of electricity. I grabbed a comb and ran it through the
>tousled mops of the three youngsters, and soon had enough static charge
>to clear the way to safety.

Hey if you like kids reading, fine. I'll stick to the more serious
stuff.

[yon lew]

pmccu...@aol.com (PMccutc103) writes:

>pma...@eskimo.com (Brian Pickrell) wrote:

>>The reason I crossposted this article is that the same premise is in
>>effect today. The Space Shuttle is still vulnerable to single-point
>>failures; if something goes wrong, everybody gets blown up. This is a
>>fundamental design defect, and space travel will never be practical until
>>the rocket designers abandon the _Cold Equations_ mentality and decide
>>that exposing passengers to this kind of danger is simply not acceptable.

>That's just silly. I haven't done a statistical analysis, but I would bet
>that the chances of dying on the shuttle are far lower than the chances of
>dying faced by the average passenger on a trip across the Atlantic at any
>time prior to 1900. And ocean travel was clearly "practical" by 1900.
>Your problem is the modern obsession with making life risk-free. So long
>as passengers assume any risks voluntarily, there is no moral or practical
>problem with letting them take those risks. The reason space travel isn't
>practical today is because a) it's expensive as all hell and b) there
>isn't much of any place that's worth _going to_. If Mars were like
>Kansas, we'd be there now, no matter the risks.

>Oh, and I agree with you that the story is not that well-crafted. It's
>silly to think that nobody would have thought to mention that stowaways
>would be shot and stuffed out the airlock. But the story is about the
>imutability of natural law, and the fact that we're discussing a mediocre
>story by a forgotten writer demonstrates that it succeeded at some level.
>________________________

>Pete McCutchen

Oh, I don't know. It's supposed to be a passenger liner after all. It's
hard to imagine a Captain Steubing type, standing in front of the
assembled passengers in the dining hall, finishing off his first
shipboard lecture with an "Oh, by the way, don't stow away on the shuttles
or we'll kill you". Anyway, maybe he did say something to that effect.
The young lady in question might have been lost in daydreams, especially
if the most of what came before was about shuffleboard and other
shipboard activities.

Would it show up on the news? Would you know about something like this
before you got on the liner? I don't know--I have a feeling that a lot
of stowaways on some ships end up over the side, and that's something
that's not on the news a lot except when somebody manages to make it to
shore.

[Steve Patterson]

In article <5e2uik$r...@camel2.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com (James S. Partridge) says:

>
>no_spam_s...@wwdc.com (Steve Patterson) wrote:
>
>>Anyway, since it is much easier for a person in a car to allow take-out
>>coffee to cool than it is for a person in a car to *heat* cold coffee to
>>a drinkable temperature, why *shouldn't* McD serve its coffee hot?
>
>Because it is impossible to change the eating habits of the public at
>large, but it is possible to change the way McDonalds serves its
>coffee. If you believe that getting your coffee nice and hot is worth
>causing serious burns to, among others, elderly ladies, then I feel
>very sorry for you.

No, I don't think that a hot cup of coffee is worth maiming little old
ladies. (Cute trick, making that implication. I'll have to remember that
for my writing.) I do, however, think that people are largely responsible
for their actions, and that *if* they know that the coffee is hot, then the
customer has enough information to act to ensure their safety.

And it *is* possible to change the drinking habits of consumers. The archetypical
case is drinking and driving. Now, should the alcohol content of wine,
beer, and liquor be regulated to insure that people who drive after consuming
booze won't hurt themselves? Or should we attack the real problem, the
bad habits of a few consumers?

>>>But at McDonalds, you don't have any such choice.
>
>>YES. YOU DO. You can wait three to five minutes (as I do) with the coffee
>>cup's lid removed before drinking it. Remove the lid while in a stable
>>posture, not while juggling it over your lap.
>
>Once more, for the hard of hearing: she was parked. The car wasn't
>moving. She was in a "stable posture," If your point is that no one
>should try to open a McDonalds coffee cup while within 5 feet of any
>automobile, then I suggest to you that McDonalds needs to redesign its
>coffee cup lids.

a) Forcing McDonalds to server their coffee at a lower temperature gives
the customer a choice? (I should have brought up that point earlier.)

b) She obviously was holding the cup so that a spill would end in her lap.
THAT IS A NO-NO. With any kind of lid, there is a chance of spillage.
If you're smart, you *don't* take that kind of chance. Speaking as someone
who earned food and rent as a security guard, and thus has vast experience
with matters caffine, you do not open the coffee while holding it up. If
you absolutely *have* to drink your coffee while in the car, you should
set the cup down on the passenger seat, bracing the cup with one hand, and
either pull up the tab or remove the lid. That way, if you spill you only
mar the upholstery and risk a minor splash on the back of your hand. And
the potential injury to your hand can be avoided if your "oh, shit!" reflex
is fast enough. (Again, from personal experience.)

Simple.

>>"The Company is not responsable for injury or loss of property caused by
>>improper operation of this product." Do we need to have this printed on
>>all coffee cups? How about staplers? Computer equipment? Light bulbs?
>>Why am I having flashbacks to the "BLOOM COUNTY" comic strip, when Steve
>>Dallas captured a time machine and litigated against just about every
>>historical figure known, and then returned to a blighted landscape empty
>>of man and his works because no one wants to do anything for fear of being
>>liable...
>
>Warnings are cheap. Injuries are painful and expensive. Warnings can
>prevent an injury that would otherwise have happined. You're against
>this?

Warnings aren't the issue. The issue is the (apparently American, but the
problem could be more general) impulse to litigate the instant something
adverse happens. "It's not my fault; it's society's fault! They oughtta
pay..." The issue is that some people wish to dodge responsibility for their
own actions, passing the blame for their failures on someone else. The
issue is having the majority forced to conform to ludicrous restrictions
in order to accommodate these people. The issue is having a legal climate
which would imply that I have to get a waiver from everyone within thirty
feet before I blow my nose, for fear that someone else will catch cold next
week and sue me for loss of wages and punative damages.

I might add that trying to force people to act safely has, in at least one
instance, caused more harm. The North American standard for inflation rates
of airbags is set to protect an average-weight NA citizen *who isn't wearing
a seatbelt.* The pressure required to safely inflate an airbag
designed to protect those of us responsible enough to wear a seatbelt is
low enough that you *wouldn't* have infants being crushed underneath a
deploying airbag despite being otherwise safely secured in the front
passenger seat.

I am *for* warnings. I think that consumers have the right to make
informed decisions about their purchases.

I am *against* restrictions imposed to protect a few from their own folly
at the cost of cutting out some benefit for the rest of us.

I am *against* the pattern of thought which (local case follows) awards a
large sum to the family of a child who climbed over a three meter (ten foot)
chain link outer fence, crawled under a two meter (seven foot) inner fence
whose corner had been damaged recently, and climbed onto an electrical
transformer and nearly barbequed herself; on the grounds that the local
power company was negligent about not fixing that corner of the inner
fence within that first week. Despite multiple warning signs, the child
continued on her arduous trek into danger. Now what precautions can we
take to protect her from herself? Remember, a ten-foot-tall chain link
fence couldn't keep her out.

>>>Now you *are* being disingenious, Pete. Cooling down coffee to a
>>>temperature that will not cause serious burns is hardly the equivalent
>>>of puree-ing food.
>
>>YES. IT IS. It is altering the method of preparation of a food to avoid
>>a small chance of injury due to consumer negligence. An alteration that will adversely
>>affect the flavour and aroma of the food, when a reasonable amount of care
>>by the customer can eliminate the hazard.
>
>But the consumer in this case was never warned of the hazard in the
>first place. And I simply refuse to believe that simply letting the
>coffee cool to a degree that it can no longer injure a consumer will
>substantially alter its "flavour and aroma." (Of course, in the
>interest of being fair, I will admit that I don't drink coffee, so I
>can't state this of my own knowledge.)

If you don't drink coffee, then you don't know how much the flavour and
aroma of coffee changes when it is cold. Think of the difference between
"tea" and "iced tea", except that "iced coffee" must be prepared more
carefully to preserve its flavour than tea. Cold coffee tastes different
than hot coffee. *Warm* coffee tastes different than hot coffee.

And at the McD's I have visited, there is a warning right on the cup.
"Contents are hot", or something like that. Just like they put a warning
on their pastries, "Filling is hot." The problem isn't lack of warnings,
it's the lack of attention to warnings by a few which imposes a burden upon
the rest of us.

>>> We're not talking about cooling it down to room
>>>temperature, after all. The stuff can be held at a high, but still
>>>non-dangerous temperature.
>
>>And that would be...? What? 160 degrees? 140? 98.4? 32? And how long
>>must this temperature be maintained? A minute? An hour? A day?
>
>I don't know personally. Neither, I presume, do you. However, there
>are standards published and health dept. regulations issued, as
>another poster alluded to. You going to go to a restaurant that has a
>sign up: "This establishment ignores Health Department guidelines"?

The difference being that hot coffee is a lot more detectable than e coli-
laden hamburgers. You should expect your coffee to be hot. (It's made with
*boiling* *water*, fer gosh's sakes.) You should not expect trichanosis in
your pork chop. You can *feel*, through the cup, that coffee is hot.
Ptomain is indetectable until you're showing someone what you had for lunch.
Restrictions on food preparation in restaurants help control the *really*
dangerous stuff, like botulism, from which consumers cannot protect
themselves.

Or do you really think that hot coffee is as dangerous as botulism?

>>And why should I let *you* tell me what temperature *my* coffee should be?
>
>>Why can't *I* decide that for myself?
>
>You had no more ability to decide for yourself before the decision
>than after. McDonalds decided for you. Are you seriously contending
>that if you actually had a choice you would choose near-boiling coffee
>over coffee just barely cool enough to actually drink?

Yes. My father (weird duck that he is) takes coffee fresh out of the
Melita(tm) and puts it in the microwave to heat it. I prefer my coffee much
cooler than that. McD's lets us both have our prefered coffee temperature
by serving it at *his* temperature, and allowing me to let my coffee
cool off to *mine*.

Legislating a mandatory lower temperature punishes Dad for the actions of
another. A mandatory lower temperature punishes me if I have to carry my
take-out coffee anywhere outside the restaurant, especially during the
winter. It inconveniences *everyone* out there who grabs a take-out
coffee in the morning and leaves it in the car until they get to work.

All because someone opened a hot cup of coffee over her lap.

[DISCLAIMER: Injury or loss of property caused by the improper operation
of this Usenet post is not the responsibility of the writer. Use as
directed. Not for internal consumption. Opinions expressed in the preceding
statement do not necessarily reflect those of any other beings, sentient
or otherwise. Writer under pressure; do not puncture or incinerate
writer.]

[Norman L. DeForest]

Steve Patterson (no_spam_s...@wwdc.com) wrote:
: I've been patient with this subject for too long...

: In article <5dvkkb$a...@camel5.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com (James S. Partridge) says:
: >

: >pmccu...@aol.com (PMccutc103) wrote:
: >
: [re: hot coffee at McDonalds restaurants]
: >>Now you're right; I don't drink it immediately or rub it on my
: >>flesh straigh out of the machine. I let it cool. There is no question
: >>that coffee should cool before being consumed.
: >>The question, though, is whether the _customer_, who presumably knows how
: >>hot he or she likes the coffee
: >
: >. . .but is unable to order it any other way than as it comes from the
: >McDonalds crew . . .

: Logic exercise. Complete this syllogism;

: a) Hot objects cool off with time and exposure to ambient air.
: b) Coffee must be made boiling water, which is hot.
: c) ...

: [Hint: most six-year-olds can figure this one out. The fact that the plaintiff,
: in her majority, could not is indicative of something. The fact that the legal
: system could not is indicative of something else.]

: >>should get the coffee hot and then allow it

: >>to cool to the preferred temperature or whether McDonalds should pre-cool
: >>the coffee so it can be consumed immediately. Actually, so it _must_ be
: >>consumed immediately, because pre-cooled coffee will get _cold_ fast.
: >
: >[W]ho should McDonalds gear their production line for? The 99% that
: >grab what they want and consume it immediately, or the 1% that waits a
: >while to enjoy the elegant atmosphere?

: How about leaving that decision to *the consumer*? Ya know, the ones who
: are supposed to be the arbiters of the market?

: Anyway, since it is much easier for a person in a car to allow take-out

: coffee to cool than it is for a person in a car to *heat* cold coffee to
: a drinkable temperature, why *shouldn't* McD serve its coffee hot?

: >>I think that I'm smart enough to know that fresh hot coffee should be

: >>given a chance to cool. I'm a big boy, so I can decide how hot I want my
: >>coffee to be whne I drink it.

: >
: >But at McDonalds, you don't have any such choice.

: YES. YOU DO. You can wait three to five minutes (as I do) with the coffee

---------------------------------------------===============
: cup's lid removed before drinking it. Remove the lid while in a stable
=================-------------------
: posture, not while juggling it over your lap.

1) From what I've read in this thread, she didn't have a chance to wait
for three to five minutes *with the lid removed*. She was scalded
while removing a defective lid.
2) A regular at McDonalds might have known that the coffee there was
extremely hotter than the coffee served elsewhere BUT she may not have
been a regular customer at McDonalds. She may have been used to getting
her coffee in other places such as Burger King where the coffee was
not as hot. She may not have expected, in that case, the coffee to be
as hot as it was.

Reasonable customer expectations play a large part in the consumer
protection laws. If I am allergic to tomatoes then it is my own damned
fault if I get sick from putting ketchup/catsup/<your favourite spelling
here> on my food because tomatoes is a normal ingredient. If I order pea
soup in a restaurant or buy it in the grocery store and get sick because
the soup had tomatoes in it without a warning on the menu or label then I
could sue because tomatoes are not a normal ingredient of pea soup.

Some cookies have recently been taken off the market in Canada because
the mixing vats used to make the dough had previously been used to make
peanut butter cookies and were not adequately cleaned. These cookies,
therefore, contained traces of peanuts. There is nothing wrong with
selling cookies containing peanuts *if* *they* *are* *so* *labeled*.
These cookies were of a type that normally did *not* contain peanuts
and were not labelled as containing peanuts so were removed for being
a hazard to those who are allergic to peanuts. Imported cookies from
Europe have also been impounded recently when they were found to contain
peanuts without being so labelled. Most people are not bothered by
peanuts. The law is there to protect those who *are* at risk if they
eat them *without* *being* *informed*.

I have an extreme sensitivity to pears. It is not exactly an allergy in
the strict medical sense but a sensitivity. They make me throw up.
At one restaurant, I had a lavish meal and then ordered apple pie.
Half way through the pie, I had to race to the washroom and reached a
toilet in time to bring up my entire meal. When leaving the washroom, I
overheard someone ask the waitress what they used to give the pie its
unique flavour. "Oh, we put a couple of pears in with the apples to add
a different taste to it." was her reply.

The restaurant was a bit upset when I refused to pay for the meal.
The police backed me up. It is *not* a reasonable expectation to
find pears in apple pie. I should have been informed of the "unique"
ingredient. Refusing to pay for a meal that I had just had to flush
down the toilet was reasonable on my part. Had the restaurant mentioned
the pears in the menu or had I been informed when I ordered the pie then
any discomfort I would have suffered would have been my fault. Had I
ordered fruit coctail which usually has pears in it, it would have been
my fault if I got sick. The reasonable customer expectation in this case
was to have no pears in an apple pie.

In the case of the coffee from McDonalds, if the coffee was sold at a
temperature much higher than what was "typical" in the food industry,
then customer expectations would be that the coffee should be at a
drinkable temperature with much less of a cooling-off period than was
necessary for the temperature of their coffee. Under those conditions,
their coffee was a hazard to anyone not a regular customer.

... And from previous complaints, they knew it.

Norman De Forest
af...@chebucto.ns.ca
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~af380/Profile.html
(A Speech Friendly Site)

.........................................................................
Q. Which is the greater problem in the world today, ignorance or apathy?
A. I don't know and I couldn't care less.
.........................................................................

[Matt Hickman]

In <lewyE5n...@netcom.com>, le...@netcom.com (yon lew) writes:
>Would it show up on the news? Would you know about something like this
>before you got on the liner? I don't know--I have a feeling that a lot
>of stowaways on some ships end up over the side, and that's something
>that's not on the news a lot except when somebody manages to make it to
>shore.

There was a story in a local paper about a stowaways on a freighter being
put in dingys in mid-ocean never to be seen or heard from again. Apparently
if you come into U.S. and Canadian ports with a stowaway you get fined. There
is insurance for this, but a lot of marginal operations don't carry this kind
of insurance. Because of this, there is a certain amount of pressure on these
freighter captains not to have stowaways, which is why the stowaways are
ditched in mid-ocean.

The reason it got into the paper was that authorities in Canada (IIRC) had
gotten wind of one of these incidents and were prosecuting or attempting
to find a way to prosecute the captain of the freighter.

Matt Hickman bh...@chevron.com TANSTAAFL!
OS/2 Systems Specialist, Chevron Information Technologies Co.
There comes a time when a man must stand up for his rights or he
can't look at himself in the mirror. I had already shaved, so I
paid--$18.50 Sing.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
_Glory Road_ 1963

[-Mammel,L.H.]

In article <5dvbkl$l...@clarknet.clark.net>, pat <p...@clark.net> wrote:

>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the

>scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
>before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
>accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
>power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.

I actually remember this issue coming up during the coverage
of the events. All the news people were in a tizzy over the
amount of oxygen. A news conference was held and the spokesman
started intoning their plans etc., when the press erupted
from the floor, "WHAT ABOUT OXYGEN? DO THEY HAVE ENOUGH
OXYGEN?" Yes, they did. "HOW COULD THEY?" The amount in
the lunar module included allowance for two purges of the
cabin during their lunar excursions. "OHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Also, FYI, sometime before Apollo 11, LEM was dropped in favor
of LM ( Lunar Excursion Module -> Lunar Module ) but
it continued to be referred to orally as the "Lem", and
LEM survives by virtue of its lexicographical utility in
crossword puzzles.

Lew Mammel, Jr.

[Matt Hickman]

In <5e4s39$3...@van1s03.cyberion.com>, no_spam_s...@wwdc.com (Steve Patterson) writes:
<snip>

>Warnings aren't the issue.

<snip>

>I might add that trying to force people to act safely has, in at least one
>instance, caused more harm. The North American standard for inflation rates
>of airbags is set to protect an average-weight NA citizen *who isn't wearing
>a seatbelt.* The pressure required to safely inflate an airbag
>designed to protect those of us responsible enough to wear a seatbelt is
>low enough that you *wouldn't* have infants being crushed underneath a
>deploying airbag despite being otherwise safely secured in the front
>passenger seat.

It had been known for some time that air bags can kill infants, but
not publicized so that the air-bags-keep-you-safe message would not be
diluted. This also happened with non-latex condoms. Non-latex condoms have a
poor track record for preventling the spread of AIDS, but this was not
publicized for several years for fear of confusing the consumer, whom public
health officials were trying to convince to use condoms. That there are
differing materials used to make condoms and if you want one to prevent the
spread of AIDS, use ones made of latex, is -- in the estimation of some -- too
complex a message to be understood.

Matt Hickman bh...@chevron.com TANSTAAFL!
OS/2 Systems Specialist, Chevron Information Technologies Co.

For my own good? That sounds like what they told the horse
thief when they hanged him.

Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)

_The Door Into Summer_ 1956

[Ian A. York]

In article <5e5lg6$7...@van1s03.cyberion.com>,
Steve Patterson <no_spam_s...@wwdc.com> wrote:
>
>I speak as an expert on the subject; McD's coffee is only somewhat more
>uncomfortable to slop onto your hand than that of Tim Hortons, or Country Style,
>or the Second Cup, or Burger King, or whatever you brew at home.

You are making exactly the point that MacDonald's lost the case over. You
argue that McD's coffee is "only somewhat more uncomfortable" to have on
you. This is what a reasonable person would anticipate: that spilling
coffee on yourself leads to a predictable degree of damage. This is the
case now; it was not the case at the time. The coffee at McD's at the
time led to an inordinate amount of damage, because of their insistence on
keeping it hotter than the industry standard. You're saying that a
reasonable person would not expect a cup of McD's coffee to strip the skin
off their inner thighs within a second or two, because that is what
experience with coffee in general has led them to expect; and the judge
agreed, and determined that McD's was acting in a dangerous manner by
thwarting these expectations.

The principle is that a person should act in a reasonable manner. What's
"reasonable" depends on what a person is expected to have known and
experienced. Opening a lid, in a parked car, holding the coffee near your
body, is a risk that's reasonable to take with coffee of a reasonable
(standard) temperature. It is not a reasonable risk to take when the
coffee is 40 o hotter than standard. (At McD's 180 o, you have
third-degreee burns in less than 2 seconds. In fact, if the temperature
had been 150 or less--such as the industry standard of 140 or so--there
would have been enough cooling that she would not have been severely
burned, period.)

The only conclusion I can come to is that the victim was acting in a
reasonably cautious way, given the usual experience with coffee at home
and in other fast-food outlets. Her caution was to no avail, because
McD's was acting in an unsafe manner.

Here's an analogy: You are on a sidewalk in a residential street, and spot
a car travelling toward you. There is a stop sign between you and the
car. You cross the street, but the car doesn't stop at the sign and hits
you. Is this your fault? After all, you are surely aware that cars can
do damage if they hit you. But it's reasonable to presume that the driver
will follow standard procedure and stop, and therefore the fault is on the
driver. The MacDonald's case is exactly the same principle. You claim
that the victim should have somehow anticipated that the coffee would be
much more hazardous than standard; I counter that you (having been hit by
the car) should have been aware that the car was more hazardous than
normal. How? There's no way; you can only go by your experience, as she
did.

It never fails to astonish me that people whose only acquaintance with the
case is from a Letterman monologue feel fully competent to comment on it,
and decide that the judge and jury who spent hours hearing the case must
be ignorant or stupid.

Here's a site that goes into more detail on the case:
<http://www.quellerfisher.com/liebeck.html>.

Ian
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England

[Bill MacArthur]

p...@clark.net (pat) wrote:
>In article <5e31ir$9...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...

>>Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in

>>a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
>>"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
>>carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
>>general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
>>manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
>>be too difficult a task.
>>
>>And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
>>stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.
>
>Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be limited
>to this.
>
>Start with.
>
>1) Seats.
>2) Co-pilot controls (Pedals, rudders, yoke, linkages.)
>3) Radio Nav stack and com radio stack.
>4) all manuals, logbooks, food,water.
>5) Fire extinguisher
>6) O2 bottles.
>7) engine instrumentation.
>8) flight instruments except ASI,ALtimeter, climb rate gauge,compass.
>9) carpeting
>10) garments.
>

I presume that you are talking about a Cessna 180 and not the finely CE
ship. You have built some assumptions in here:

1) You have the tools to remove the seats.
2) You have the tools to remove the co-pilot controls and not mess
anything up.
4) Manuals etc. would weigh but a few pounds unless you have some long
term provisions.
5) Fire extinguisher- OK.
6) O2- OK.
7) Tools to remove engine instrumentation.
8) " " " flight ".
9) " " " carpeting.
10) OK but the big question is Who flies the airplane while you tear it
apart?

If you had the tools to rip out all this stuff, you would probably save
more weight throwing the tools overboard.

[Steve Patterson]

In article <5e54di$4...@News.Dal.Ca>, af...@chebucto.ns.ca (Norman L. DeForest) says:
>
>Steve Patterson (no_spam_s...@wwdc.com) wrote:
>:

>: In article <5dvkkb$a...@camel5.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com (James S. Partridge) says:
>: >

>: >But at McDonalds, you don't have any such choice.
>
>: YES. YOU DO. You can wait three to five minutes (as I do) with the coffee
> ---------------------------------------------===============
>: cup's lid removed before drinking it. Remove the lid while in a stable
> =================-------------------
>: posture, not while juggling it over your lap.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[sheesh, it's starting to look like Dueling Highlights... :)]

>1) From what I've read in this thread, she didn't have a chance to wait
> for three to five minutes *with the lid removed*. She was scalded
> while removing a defective lid.

Ah, but as I replied in another entry in this thread, she must have opened
it so that it was over or near her lap. (That is where she was scalded,
unless I badly misremember.) Never, EVER do this with hot liquids. This
is bad, no matter *where* you get your coffee.

I speak as an expert on the subject; McD's coffee is only somewhat more
uncomfortable to slop onto your hand than that of Tim Hortons, or Country Style,
or the Second Cup, or Burger King, or whatever you brew at home.

>2) A regular at McDonalds might have known that the coffee there was

> extremely hotter than the coffee served elsewhere BUT she may not have
> been a regular customer at McDonalds. She may have been used to getting
> her coffee in other places such as Burger King where the coffee was
> not as hot. She may not have expected, in that case, the coffee to be
> as hot as it was.

Coffee served at other restaurants is uncomfortably hot to have spilled
on your lap (unless you order iced cappuccino, which is uncomfortably
cold when spilled in your lap) and would still provide enough of a pause
for those thinking about it.

My fingers still hurt from my other posting ("The Hot Equations"), where I
do a more thorough job of explaining my point. I won't retype it (ouch!),
but if it has arrived at your server please read it for my reply to this
point.

[Vicke Dovheden]

In article <5e4s39$3...@van1s03.cyberion.com>,
no_spam_s...@wwdc.com (Steve Patterson) wrote:

>In article <5e2uik$r...@camel2.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com (James S.
>Partridge) says:
>>
>>no_spam_s...@wwdc.com (Steve Patterson) wrote:
>>
>>>Anyway, since it is much easier for a person in a car to allow take-out
>>>coffee to cool than it is for a person in a car to *heat* cold coffee to
>>>a drinkable temperature, why *shouldn't* McD serve its coffee hot?
>>
>>Because it is impossible to change the eating habits of the public at
>>large, but it is possible to change the way McDonalds serves its
>>coffee. If you believe that getting your coffee nice and hot is worth
>>causing serious burns to, among others, elderly ladies, then I feel
>>very sorry for you.

You may feel as sorry for me as you want: It's quite okey with me if
little old ladies(tm) wants to maim themselves because they don't use
common sense. Coffe is supposed to be hot: it is best prepared at a
temperature of ca. 96 centigrade, and kept warm until serving at ca.
85 centigrades (IIRC), otherwise some kind of acid (don't know the
english name) is developed which makes the coffe bitter .
Lukewarm coffe also taste bad, but if you enjoy it that way you just have
to wait a few minutes for it to cool.

Vicke, who found a nice slogan among NancyL's calligraphic buttons:
"Death before decaf!"

vi...@df.lth.se

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

[Steve Patterson]

In article <5e5pvg$8...@panix.com>, iay...@panix.com (Ian A. York) says:
>
>In article <5e5lg6$7...@van1s03.cyberion.com>,
>Steve Patterson <no_spam_s...@wwdc.com> wrote:
>>

>>I speak as an expert on the subject; McD's coffee is only somewhat more
>>uncomfortable to slop onto your hand than that of Tim Hortons, or Country Style,
>>or the Second Cup, or Burger King, or whatever you brew at home.
>

>You are making exactly the point that MacDonald's lost the case over.

[example axe-murdered...hack!]

>
>The principle is that a person should act in a reasonable manner. What's
>"reasonable" depends on what a person is expected to have known and
>experienced. Opening a lid, in a parked car, holding the coffee near your
>body, is a risk that's reasonable to take with coffee of a reasonable
>(standard) temperature.

Not to us physical cowards, it ain't. "I'm not like other people. Pain
hurts me." (Daffy Duck.)

I have always assumed that hot coffee may injure, or at least feel very
uncomfortable, if spilled onto me. Most of my friends also make the same
assumption. I had come to think that this mindset was fairly common, and
was perplexed that someone would actually hold a cup of hot coffee (or
soup, or any hot liquid) so that a spill would land on him/herself.

> It is not a reasonable risk to take when the
>coffee is 40 o hotter than standard. (At McD's 180 o, you have
>third-degreee burns in less than 2 seconds. In fact, if the temperature
>had been 150 or less--such as the industry standard of 140 or so--there
>would have been enough cooling that she would not have been severely
>burned, period.)

You're sure about that 3rd degree burn in two seconds? That sounds more
like cooking-fat numbers. Remember that a third degree burn is the
equivalent of turning your skin and tissues into medium-rare cooked meat.
I could see a two second burn with cooking fat or hot oil, but not water
even if it was boiling (212oF).

>Here's an analogy: You are on a sidewalk in a residential street, and spot
>a car travelling toward you. There is a stop sign between you and the
>car. You cross the street, but the car doesn't stop at the sign and hits
>you. Is this your fault?

[remainder of example Leatherfaced... brzzzzt!]

I don't think that this analogy is terribly applicable. A car has an
operator, who can continuously monitor the environment and can be reasonably
be expected to stop upon seeing a crossing pedestrian. But a cup of coffee
has no driver; safe handling of coffee is incumbant upon the handler. If
I cross at a stop sign, and I get hit by a car, then there is clearly
negligence on the part of the driver. Should I spill hot coffee upon myself,
is it my fault, or someone else's, that I was scalded?

Speaking as a former high-school student with a fair number of "hot glass"
accidents in the chemistry lab, I'd have to say that most of the time a
scald resulting from a spill is the fault of the person who made the spill.
Unless someone managed to leave a pot of coffee perched on the corner of
a desk, to be tipped over by a casual sleeve brushing.

By your argument, I should have sued when my waiter accidentally slopped
my order of veal parmezan into my collar, a rather uncomfortable experience,
let me tell you. The melted parmezan was quite hot, still hot enough to
run down. I managed to quickly loosen my tie and pull my collar away, and
only suffered minor discomfort, but still the risk was there that I may
have received a serious burn. According to your reasoning, the restaurant
(not the waiter) was liable because they were serving me my veal parmezan
at a dangerous temperature. I was satisfied with a simple apology from the
waiter, and an offer to pay for the dry cleaning bill (though one was not
required; good ol' laundry detergent handled the mess).

>It never fails to astonish me that people whose only acquaintance with the
>case is from a Letterman monologue feel fully competent to comment on it,
>and decide that the judge and jury who spent hours hearing the case must
>be ignorant or stupid.
>
>Here's a site that goes into more detail on the case:
><http://www.quellerfisher.com/liebeck.html>.

I wasn't going by the Letterman version, I was going by my recollection of
the newspaper coverage in the Toronto Globe and Mail, a somewhat more reputable
source for information. Still, I'll have to check that site in the morning
just in case my recollection isn't complete.

[Josh Kaderlan]

rrs...@ibm.net (Matt Hickman) wrote:

>It had been known for some time that air bags can kill infants, but
>not publicized so that the air-bags-keep-you-safe message would not be
>diluted. This also happened with non-latex condoms. Non-latex condoms have a
>poor track record for preventling the spread of AIDS, but this was not
>publicized for several years for fear of confusing the consumer, whom public
>health officials were trying to convince to use condoms. That there are
>differing materials used to make condoms and if you want one to prevent the
>spread of AIDS, use ones made of latex, is -- in the estimation of some -- too
>complex a message to be understood.

In the interests of accuracy... Non-latex condoms made from animal
products (lambskin condoms, for example) are not effective at
preventing the transmission of HIV. Polyurethane condoms, however,
are impermeable to HIV (or so says www.condomania.com; and the CDC
says that lab tests have shown that "particles even as small as sperm
and viruses like HIV cannot pass through... polyurethane").

--Josh

[Ian A. York]

In article <5e6akk$a...@van1s03.cyberion.com>,

Steve Patterson <no_spam_s...@wwdc.com> wrote:
>
>You're sure about that 3rd degree burn in two seconds? That sounds more
>like cooking-fat numbers. Remember that a third degree burn is the

Yup. I checked it in a couple of places. The third-degree burn is what
this woman *got*. Her legs were turned into hamburger. She need massive
reconstructive surgery. In fact, originally she didn't try to sue McD's,
she asked them to cover the price of the surgery--$50,000 or so, as I
recall. Only when they refused to do so (and I bet they wished they had)
did she take them to court.

The cooking-fat comparison is why the lower-temperature coffee (less than
150 o) is not going to cause third-degree burns at all. If it was cooking
fat at that temperature, it would cause burns in 6-7 seconds, or something
like that; but being basically hot water it cools off before it causes
enough damage.

This confusion with the degree of damage expected is my point. One simply
does not expect a cup of coffee to boil the flesh off your legs.

>By your argument, I should have sued when my waiter accidentally slopped
>my order of veal parmezan into my collar, a rather uncomfortable experience,
>let me tell you. The melted parmezan was quite hot, still hot enough to

If, as a result of that spill, you spent a couple of weeks in the hospital
and required plastic surgery to repair your arms and chest after having
your tissue destroyed down to the bone, would you have laughed it off and
accepted a simple apology from the waiter and a dry-cleaning bill?

Perhaps you would. How about if you learned that more than 700 people had
undergone similar burns at the hands of that waiter and his veal parmezan
from hell in the previous ten years?

No big deal? How about if you learned that that restaurant had a special
veal parmezan policy, which involved having the waiter rush it out to the
table on roller skates so that it would be "nice and hot"? And that if
the restaurant had foregone the roller skates (like all the neighbouring
restaurants) then the veal would have done no more than given you a scare
and ruined your suit? This is a very accurate comparison to the McD's
policy.

Perhaps you would not have sued the restaurant even so. That would be
your decision. But (and this is the whole key to the discussion) would
you say that someone who did sue the restaurant was being unreasonable?
Would you say that it is insane to put any blame whatsoever on the
restaurant's policy? I don't think you could say this. And in fact, as I
said, the judge and jury who heard this case decided it wasn't
particularly unreasonable.

Certainly one shouldn't assume that corporations invariably are
irresponsible, or that courts are always just. But it's equally a
knee-jerk reaction to assume that a corporation is always responsible, or
that a court is always unjust, without looking into the details.

[Lorenzo L. Love]

It appears from the comments in this thread that many of the posters
have either never read the story and are therefore talking out their ass
about something they have no knowledge of, or that they had read it
so long ago that they have no clear recollection of what the story is
about. "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin is one of the most often
reprinted stories in SF and a trip to your library should turn it up. One
of the most recent collections to have it is _The Ascent Of Wonder: The
Evolution Of Hard SF_ edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer from
TOR 1994. Part of the editors' introduction to "The Cold Equations" said:
"Here is one of the most popular and controversial hard sf stories of
the last fifty years, a story that stacks the deck and then plays with
the reader's emotions with carefully juxtaposed cliches that imply a
_deus ex machina_ - then frustrates that false expection......Godwin's
story angered many readers when it appeared in the fifties, nearly all of
whom wanted the problem solved by violating some scientific principle or
law."
The editors go on to quote James Gunn:
"If the reader doesn't understand it or appreciate what it is trying
to say about humanity and its relationship to its environment, then that
reader isn't likely to appreciate science fiction. If the reader keeps
objecting...then that reader isn't reading the story correctly."
I agree with these statements. The fact that a short story invokes
such heated debate after 43 years is a testimonial to its greatest.
By the way I strongly recommend _The Ascent Of Wonder_. It's a hundred
years of the best SF written.

Lorenzo L. Love
lll...@snowcrest.net

[Sean Aschen]

On 15 Feb 1997 23:14:24 GMT, rrs...@ibm.net (Matt Hickman) wrote:

>In <5e4s39$3...@van1s03.cyberion.com>, no_spam_s...@wwdc.com (Steve Patterson) writes:
><snip>

>>Warnings aren't the issue.

><snip>

>>I might add that trying to force people to act safely has, in at least one
>>instance, caused more harm. The North American standard for inflation rates
>>of airbags is set to protect an average-weight NA citizen *who isn't wearing
>>a seatbelt.* The pressure required to safely inflate an airbag
>>designed to protect those of us responsible enough to wear a seatbelt is
>>low enough that you *wouldn't* have infants being crushed underneath a
>>deploying airbag despite being otherwise safely secured in the front
>>passenger seat.
>

>It had been known for some time that air bags can kill infants, but
>not publicized so that the air-bags-keep-you-safe message would not be
>diluted. This also happened with non-latex condoms. Non-latex condoms have a
>poor track record for preventling the spread of AIDS, but this was not
>publicized for several years for fear of confusing the consumer, whom public
>health officials were trying to convince to use condoms. That there are
>differing materials used to make condoms and if you want one to prevent the
>spread of AIDS, use ones made of latex, is -- in the estimation of some -- too
>complex a message to be understood.
>

>Matt Hickman bh...@chevron.com TANSTAAFL!
>OS/2 Systems Specialist, Chevron Information Technologies Co.
> For my own good? That sounds like what they told the horse
> thief when they hanged him.
> Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
> _The Door Into Summer_ 1956

Call me cruel and cold-hearted, but that is pathetic. They should
have made the message "Latex condoms prevent the spread of AIDS.
Other forms do not." If you are too stupid to figure that one out,
perhaps you deserve to die?

Sean

[Bill MacArthur]

le...@netcom.com (yon lew) wrote:

>
>Would it show up on the news? Would you know about something like this
>before you got on the liner? I don't know--I have a feeling that a lot
>of stowaways on some ships end up over the side, and that's something
>that's not on the news a lot except when somebody manages to make it to
>shore.

One is reminded on the Taiwanese crew that allegedly threw several
Romanian stowaways over board several months ago. If the crew hadn't
come clean then no one would have known.

[Barry DeCicco]

In article <5e5pvg$8...@panix.com>, iay...@panix.com (Ian A. York) writes:
|> In article <5e5lg6$7...@van1s03.cyberion.com>,

|> Steve Patterson <no_spam_s...@wwdc.com> wrote:
|> >
|> >I speak as an expert on the subject; McD's coffee is only somewhat more
|> >uncomfortable to slop onto your hand than that of Tim Hortons, or Country Style,
|> >or the Second Cup, or Burger King, or whatever you brew at home.
|>

|> You are making exactly the point that MacDonald's lost the case over. You
|> argue that McD's coffee is "only somewhat more uncomfortable" to have on
|> you. This is what a reasonable person would anticipate: that spilling
|> coffee on yourself leads to a predictable degree of damage. This is the
|> case now; it was not the case at the time. The coffee at McD's at the
|> time led to an inordinate amount of damage, because of their insistence on
|> keeping it hotter than the industry standard. You're saying that a
|> reasonable person would not expect a cup of McD's coffee to strip the skin
|> off their inner thighs within a second or two, because that is what
|> experience with coffee in general has led them to expect; and the judge
|> agreed, and determined that McD's was acting in a dangerous manner by
|> thwarting these expectations.
|>

|> The principle is that a person should act in a reasonable manner. What's
|> "reasonable" depends on what a person is expected to have known and
|> experienced. Opening a lid, in a parked car, holding the coffee near your
|> body, is a risk that's reasonable to take with coffee of a reasonable

|> (standard) temperature. It is not a reasonable risk to take when the

|> coffee is 40 o hotter than standard. (At McD's 180 o, you have
|> third-degreee burns in less than 2 seconds. In fact, if the temperature
|> had been 150 or less--such as the industry standard of 140 or so--there
|> would have been enough cooling that she would not have been severely
|> burned, period.)
|>

From what I recall, in reading about this in newspapers:

1) One of McD's lawyers used the term 'statistically insignificant' to
describe the woman's burns. Apparently, the jury didn't like that
term.

2) The stated temperature at which the coffee was stored was unusually
high.

Barry

p

[le...@netcom.com]

In article <5e3duh$l...@clarknet.clark.net>,

p...@clark.net (pat) wrote:
>
> In article <5e31ir$9...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
> >

> >p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
> >
> >
> >>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
> >>scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
> >>before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
> >>accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
> >>power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
> >
> >

Not quite sure what you mean by this. The idea behind the rocket
equation is that fuel is burned, the total mass of the vehicle goes down,
that changes the amount of fuel you need to burn, etc. Mass of
propellant is not a constant.

The other thing is, it can be exactly calculated. There aren't any of
the uncertainties associated with something like oxygen consumption.
Thus, the characters in TCE know just how far they can run with the
girl's added mass on board.

>

> >
> >
> >>any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
> >>is a joke.
> >
> >

If these fittings are disposable, then why are they even there in the
first place? Especially when extra mass means burning more fuel, which
means burning more money. Anyway 1) how do you tear them out and 2) if
they're not truly superfluous, (for instance, something like backups),
are you sure you want to fly without them?

> >Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in
> >a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
> >"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
> >carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
> >general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
> >manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
> >be too difficult a task.
> >
> >And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
> >stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.
>
> Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be limited
> to this.
>
> Start with.
>
> 1) Seats.
> 2) Co-pilot controls (Pedals, rudders, yoke, linkages.)
> 3) Radio Nav stack and com radio stack.
> 4) all manuals, logbooks, food,water.
> 5) Fire extinguisher
> 6) O2 bottles.
> 7) engine instrumentation.
> 8) flight instruments except ASI,ALtimeter, climb rate gauge,compass.
> 9) carpeting
> 10) garments.
>

> -------

Again, how do you tear all this stuff out? Also remember that you're
running against a time limit.

>
> now if you are a real macho stud, and not some whining, crying,
> quitter, you get out on the wing and take off the
> flaps, drives and linkages. Speed brakes if they are existent.
> if that's not enough drop the wheels and landing gear struts.
>
> That is assuming you are macho enough.
>
> the goal is to get the cargo there, the aircraft is disposable.
> a belly landing maybe ugly, but it is an acceptable option,
>
> If you are up to the challenge.
>

And belly landings are a good way to die.

Why even bother tearing all of this stuff out? Why not just stuff that
girl out the airlock? Isn't it a little foolish to risk the lives of the
pilot and all those miners by gutting his ship just to save the life of
one human being?

Anyway, what's macho go to do with it? Machismo or whatever is a poor
substitute for courage; for instance, if the girl had said, "Well, you
could gut this ship, trashing backup instrumentation and cutting away
pieces of the hull, drastically reducing the chances of either of us
making it and in the process dooming those poor miners, or I can walk out
that airlock. I think I'll walk out that airlock."

Now that's a lot more admirable than machismo.

> ------------------
>
> Of course it's far easier to sit there reading magazines and whining
> about how hard life is in a university then actually doing the hard
> things.
>
> pat

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet

[pat]

In article <E5o61...@news.uwindsor.ca>, bil...@uwindsor.ca says...

>
>p...@clark.net (pat) wrote:
>>In article <5e31ir$9...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>

>>>Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in
>>>a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
>>>"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
>>>carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
>>>general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
>>>manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
>>>be too difficult a task.
>>>
>>>And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
>>>stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.
>>
>>Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be
limited
>>to this.
>>
>>Start with.
>>
>>1) Seats.
>>2) Co-pilot controls (Pedals, rudders, yoke, linkages.)
>>3) Radio Nav stack and com radio stack.
>>4) all manuals, logbooks, food,water.
>>5) Fire extinguisher
>>6) O2 bottles.
>>7) engine instrumentation.
>>8) flight instruments except ASI,ALtimeter, climb rate gauge,compass.
>>9) carpeting
>>10) garments.
>>

>I presume that you are talking about a Cessna 180 and not the finely CE
>ship. You have built some assumptions in here:
>
>1) You have the tools to remove the seats.
>2) You have the tools to remove the co-pilot controls and not mess
>anything up.
>4) Manuals etc. would weigh but a few pounds unless you have some long
>term provisions.
>5) Fire extinguisher- OK.
>6) O2- OK.
>7) Tools to remove engine instrumentation.
>8) " " " flight ".
>9) " " " carpeting.
>10) OK but the big question is Who flies the airplane while you tear it
>apart?
>
>If you had the tools to rip out all this stuff, you would probably save
>more weight throwing the tools overboard.
>

A swiss army knife, a Leatherman and some desperation???

Sounds like all the tools I need. Now for somethign big like a
landing gear strut that may require something larger, or some
more creative approaches, but internal light fittings???

I think it's reasonable.

pat

[Splifford]

In article <5e2uiv$r...@camel2.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com wrote:

As I said
> elsewhere, lables don't cost much and can avert accidents.

Depends. _My_ fav silly jury story was about the time that this gent did a
favour for a friend. First guy had a kennel where he trained attack dogs;
enclosure had nine foot tall fence, with warning signs "Do not enter,
dangerous animals". His house was surrounded by a six-foot tall fence,
more signs. Second guy had a half-wolf half-husky. Had to go out of town.
Gave it to first guy. First guy takes it inside dog-training area, puts it
inside a kennel, chains it down.

Neighborhood nine-year old, presumably able to read, hits baseball over
both fences. Climbs said fences. Ball has rolled into pen with half-wolf
half-husky. Kid decides he wants to play with nice doggy. Nice doggy
wasn't in a good mood. Parents sue. Win. What was that about warning
labels?
>
> Jim.

--
"Blood, blood, I must have blood"

[-Mammel,L.H.]

In article <8561229...@dejanews.com>, <le...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>Not quite sure what you mean by this. The idea behind the rocket
>equation is that fuel is burned, the total mass of the vehicle goes down,
>that changes the amount of fuel you need to burn, etc. Mass of
>propellant is not a constant.
>
>The other thing is, it can be exactly calculated. There aren't any of
>the uncertainties associated with something like oxygen consumption.
>Thus, the characters in TCE know just how far they can run with the
>girl's added mass on board.

The idea that the fuel requirement is constant and independent
of the chosen trajectory is a dynamical absurdity. In the story
the pilot deviates considerably from the planned course
"to prolong that ultimate end". If the course had been planned
for minimal fuel usage, this sentimental act would be fatal -
much more surely than a minor weight deviation. And Wait! He
stops DECELERATING and it will take LONGER to get there?

The operative rules here are literary, fantastical, not
physical. The "ultimate end" of the story determines all
the rationalizations, not the other way around.

Lew Mammel, Jr.

[paschal]

On Sun, 16 Feb 1997 le...@netcom.com wrote:

> Anyway, what's macho go to do with it? Machismo or whatever is a poor
> substitute for courage; for instance, if the girl had said, "Well, you
> could gut this ship, trashing backup instrumentation and cutting away
> pieces of the hull, drastically reducing the chances of either of us
> making it and in the process dooming those poor miners, or I can walk out
> that airlock. I think I'll walk out that airlock."
>
> Now that's a lot more admirable than machismo.

Given this improbable ship to start with, the above is one alternative
scenario that I would accept. At least it suggests the triumph of the
human spirit over selfishness, fear, etc.

But: machismo is still an extremely valuable quality in men, and in the
world. It, along with other qualities, has often aided men in
accomplishing the "impossible."

-Paschal

[kewhite]

What about the fact that the author fundamentaly treats woman and men
differenty in his story? If the person in the closet has been a man he
would have simply blasted him and thrown him out the airlock. However,
because it was a GIRL he hesitated and gave her time to contact her
brother and write to her family et al.

I simply disagree with the fact that the spaceman treats woman differntly
than he treats men. What if it had been a nice guy in the closet (not
some criminal as the pilot wished) but rather an inoccent boy fresh from
earth. Would the pilot have shown as much compassion? I think not.

--
Kristopher White

[yon lew]

l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:

>In article <8561229...@dejanews.com>, <le...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>

>>Not quite sure what you mean by this. The idea behind the rocket
>>equation is that fuel is burned, the total mass of the vehicle goes down,
>>that changes the amount of fuel you need to burn, etc. Mass of
>>propellant is not a constant.
>>
>>The other thing is, it can be exactly calculated. There aren't any of
>>the uncertainties associated with something like oxygen consumption.
>>Thus, the characters in TCE know just how far they can run with the
>>girl's added mass on board.

>The idea that the fuel requirement is constant and independent

>of the chosen trajectory is a dynamical absurdity. In the story
>the pilot deviates considerably from the planned course
>"to prolong that ultimate end". If the course had been planned
>for minimal fuel usage, this sentimental act would be fatal -
>much more surely than a minor weight deviation. And Wait! He
>stops DECELERATING and it will take LONGER to get there?

It's been a while since I've read the story, but as I recall the shuttle
DID have a slight amount of surplus fuel for use in emergencies. When
the pilot lets the girl stay on board for a while before tossing her out,
it's this fuel which is being consumed.

Secondly, even if the pilot doesn't point the nose of his ship in a
different direction, just accelerating or decelerating will change his
orbit. I don't remember if he was travelling between stars or planets or
what, but you can easily set up a scenario where the above would be
true, especially if the guy has to deal with more than one big gravity
well in his path.

>The operative rules here are literary, fantastical, not
>physical. The "ultimate end" of the story determines all
>the rationalizations, not the other way around.

>Lew Mammel, Jr.

I would have to disagree here. While this story continues to excite
controversy, it almost always centers around the "Couldn't he have tossed
some stuff out?" question. I don't know that anyone's successfully
undermined the basis for the story on the grounds of it being simply
physically impossible.

[-Mammel,L.H.]

In article <lewyE5q...@netcom.com>, yon lew <le...@netcom.com> wrote:

>l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>
>>The idea that the fuel requirement is constant and independent
>>of the chosen trajectory is a dynamical absurdity. In the story
>>the pilot deviates considerably from the planned course
>>"to prolong that ultimate end". If the course had been planned
>>for minimal fuel usage, this sentimental act would be fatal -
>>much more surely than a minor weight deviation. And Wait! He
>>stops DECELERATING and it will take LONGER to get there?
>
>
>It's been a while since I've read the story, but as I recall the shuttle
>DID have a slight amount of surplus fuel for use in emergencies. When
>the pilot lets the girl stay on board for a while before tossing her out,
>it's this fuel which is being consumed.

OK, belay my "And wait! ..." remark.

It does mention a "meager surplus of fuel to compensate for
unfavorable conditions within the atmosphere." He reduces
deceleration to save fuel, right - so this defers the fatal
moment, although it would presumably shorten the trip. On the
other hand he's already been decelerating at a presumably moderate
rate for an hour without unduly wasting fuel, so we're getting
kind of a confused picture here.

Anyway, how could this delay of an hour fail to completely wreck
the carefully planned trajectory and drastically affect
the fuel requirements? A severe technical flaw. It would have
made more sense if the EDS ( Emergency Dispatch Ship ) was
still coasting before a planned burn.

>Secondly, even if the pilot doesn't point the nose of his ship in a
>different direction, just accelerating or decelerating will change his
>orbit. I don't remember if he was travelling between stars or planets or
>what, but you can easily set up a scenario where the above would be
>true, especially if the guy has to deal with more than one big gravity
>well in his path.

It's a straight "drop" onto the planet. Come on! you want to
talk rocket science and you don't know if it's "stars or
planets or what" ? Thanks for making my point about rules
fantastical!

I reiterate, the setting of the story is the fifties SF
mythos, not reality. BTW, I think that's why the ship isn't
coasting - a residual Aristotelianism whereby motion entails
some sort of propulsion, whether decelerative or otherwise.

Lew Mammel, Jr.

[Drew Stowers]

vi...@df.lth.se (Vicke Dovheden) wrote:

>In article <5e4s39$3...@van1s03.cyberion.com>,
>no_spam_s...@wwdc.com (Steve Patterson) wrote:

>>In article <5e2uik$r...@camel2.mindspring.com>, ji...@pipeline.com (James S.
>>Partridge) says:
>>>
>>>no_spam_s...@wwdc.com (Steve Patterson) wrote:
>>>
>>>>Anyway, since it is much easier for a person in a car to allow take-out
>>>>coffee to cool than it is for a person in a car to *heat* cold coffee to
>>>>a drinkable temperature, why *shouldn't* McD serve its coffee hot?
>>>
>>>Because it is impossible to change the eating habits of the public at
>>>large, but it is possible to change the way McDonalds serves its
>>>coffee. If you believe that getting your coffee nice and hot is worth
>>>causing serious burns to, among others, elderly ladies, then I feel
>>>very sorry for you.

>You may feel as sorry for me as you want: It's quite okey with me if

>little old ladies(tm) wants to maim themselves because they don't use
>common sense. Coffe is supposed to be hot: it is best prepared at a
>temperature of ca. 96 centigrade, and kept warm until serving at ca.
>85 centigrades (IIRC), otherwise some kind of acid (don't know the
>english name) is developed which makes the coffe bitter .
>Lukewarm coffe also taste bad, but if you enjoy it that way you just have
>to wait a few minutes for it to cool.

Or brewed at 205 F and served at 187 F. Which is perfectly fine if
you make it yourself or have it served in a paper cup. In styrofoam
cups, it is almost impossible to tell how hot the coffee is.

I drink coffee from Starbucks. They serve their coffee very hot and in
paper cups. The cups get so hot it is difficult to hold them. Unlike
McD's I haven't heard of Starbucks getting sued.

FYI... I quit buying coffee in styrofoam cups because it takes so long
to cool.

[CONPUTE]

Lorenzo L. Love (lll...@snowcrest.net) wrote:
: It appears from the comments in this thread that many of the posters

: Lorenzo L. Love
: lll...@snowcrest.net
:

I agree! The last time this thread was here people spend alot of time
trying to attack the writting as poor, biased and FIXED.

What they did not explain well is why with all the thousands of badly
written stoies out there why this one story is the one that always
ends up being the one discussed. I believe in GOD (flame-bait :)
But the universe itself is just a thing, it does not care for or
hate humans, it just is. And the rules that govern how spacecraft
work do not change because you are stupid, make dumb mistakes, and
wish it otherwise. SPACE KILLS STUPID PEOPLE - PERIOD!!!!!

********************************************************************

No urban legends - in the local newspapers in the last year.

Man does not obey signs to not to trespass on railway tracks, he
gets killed while walking on tracks by train. Why did he not
hear the train's horn? Why, he was listening to his walkman at
the time.

Brothers watch and wait for an East-Bound GO train to pass before
dashing acroos tracks only to be hit by the West-Bound GO train.
They had only looked in one direction and once pass the East-Bound
blocked thier view of the West Bound.

A number of *NEW* cars broke the ice on Lake Simcoe a few weeks
ago because they were parked too close together, luckly the water
was only 5 feet deep and all the cars were towed out.

Related, soon after a huge crack appeared in the ice of the same
lake, and a major snow storm moved in, a number of fisher(wo)men
wanted to stay on the ice because they were competing in a
fishing derby!

A day later on TV, the news showed a man who insisted that he was
going fishing. Well, when he reached the crack, into the water
his van went. And later the same day still another van.

Some people will do stupid things even after seeing news reports
on how dangerous something is.

Earl Colby Pottinger

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Visit our "Do-It-Yourself!" Website http://web.idirect.com :
: Easy, Fun & Affordable Webspace rental for less than $10 per month :
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[Steve Patterson]

In article <Pine.SV4.3.94.97021...@aludra.usc.edu>, kewhite <kew...@aludra.usc.edu> says:
>
>What about the fact that the author fundamentaly treats woman and men
>differenty in his story? If the person in the closet has been a man he
>would have simply blasted him and thrown him out the airlock. However,
>because it was a GIRL he hesitated and gave her time to contact her
>brother and write to her family et al.

The *author* didn't (necessarily) treat women differently than men. The
*character* did. Author != character, with a few deliberate exceptions.

>I simply disagree with the fact that the spaceman treats woman differntly
>than he treats men. What if it had been a nice guy in the closet (not
>some criminal as the pilot wished) but rather an inoccent boy fresh from
>earth. Would the pilot have shown as much compassion? I think not.

Try having a look at other fiction, SF or otherwise, written at the same
time as "The Cold Equations". (mid-1950s) This was very much the norm in
society; women were fragile creatures to be provided for and protected by
men. Godwin was commenting on that little social gem in "TCE", that the
universe doesn't care one whit whether you're male or female if you've
done something dangerous. This is a message which was very unwelcome at
the time.

Much of the impact of "TCE" is Godwin setting up his audience, with all its
prejudices and genre expectations, for a very big fall. ("But the hero
*has* to save the girl! He *does*!" -- boiled down essence of the
contents of _Astounding_'s mailbox in 1954.)

[Steve Patterson]

In article <5e4kcc$d...@clarknet.clark.net>, p...@clark.net (pat) says:
>
>In article <5e3cct$l...@clark.net>, dmpa...@clark.net says...
>>
>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>>
>>>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>>>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
>>
>>Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
>>from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
>>its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>
>Typical Narrow-minded, failure seeking Aero-space engineer.
>Okay, so this is a shuttle, What does it do once it makes
>planetary landfall, turn into a gazebo?

Typical short-sighted, fault-seeking critic. :) It isn't a shuttle.
It's an Emergency Dispatch Ship, designed to be as light as possible.
It probably operates on the Dorito(tm) principle; launch all you want,
we'll just make more. (There are *enormous* weight-savings when you
make something disposable.)

>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
>a much larger takeoff load.

No, it doesn't, because it never takes off again. The pilot would
probably be retrieved by a reusable shuttle launched by a later-arriving
FTL transport, either a scheduled supply run or a more-fully equipped
relief ship depending upon the nature of the emergency.

[example of super-science tale deleted.]
>
>Hey if you like kids reading, fine. I'll stick to the more serious
>stuff.

You might want to re-read that post more carefully, and check whether it
was *endorsing* or *denigrating* super-science tales.

[yon lew]

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.misc,rec.arts.sf.written,sci.space.policy
Subject: Re: The Cold Equations
References: <5dgi63$n...@news-central.tiac.net> <8561229...@dejanews.com> <5e871d$e...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com> <lewyE5q...@netcom.com> <5e8k9r$f...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>

l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:

Hmm, I guess I should have been more specific here. First off, just let
me say that it's been a long time since I've read this story. From what
I recall, it wasn't too specific on a lot of the technical details,
leaving you free to assume stuff. I assumed that the guy knew what he
was doing and that the extra amount of fuel he has was sizable. After
all, if he only had a tiny amount of extra fuel he wouldn't have had time
to talk to the girl; he would have had to shoot her immediately and throw
her body out the hatch. I also assumed that they plotted a new orbit
because as I pointed out before it's impossible for him to maintain the
same orbit once he stops decelerating. Given that, it's entirely
conceivable that in his new orbit it'll take him longer to get where he's
going.

So, hell, if we're going to go out on a limb let's just go all the way
out and hypothesize as to what the characters in Tom Godwin's story were
_really_ thinking. Our pilot has to navigate through several big gravity
wells, (if he's making just a planet drop, then the planet's got a couple
of big-sized moons that are messing with his orbit). Time is of the
essence, (I don't remember, but weren't these miners sick with some
disease or some such?), so the navigators use their computers to plot a
course that takes a minimal amount of time, but it requires constant
deceleration and constant fuel burning to do it. Alas, our pilot finds
this girl on board, so he kills the engines to give them some extra
time. Unfortunately, this kicks them into another orbit. The fuel he
would have burned to constantly decelerate his ship and keep him on a
minimal-time flight path will now be used to guide him along another,
slower approach.

>>Secondly, even if the pilot doesn't point the nose of his ship in a
>>different direction, just accelerating or decelerating will change his
>>orbit. I don't remember if he was travelling between stars or planets or
>>what, but you can easily set up a scenario where the above would be
>>true, especially if the guy has to deal with more than one big gravity
>>well in his path.

>It's a straight "drop" onto the planet. Come on! you want to
>talk rocket science and you don't know if it's "stars or
>planets or what" ? Thanks for making my point about rules
>fantastical!

Obviously, I was just joking about that interstellar travel part. Those
miners' grandkids' grandkids would have perished long before the shuttle
landed.

Also, I don't remember if it was a drop onto a planet, or from how far
out. If it's from way out, you can imagine the effect any nearby planets
would have on this guy's course. If it's from relatively close, you
could have the same effect from a couple of big moons.

Or hell, maybe instead of fuel he's going to slingshot off the sun or a
moon or something to guide himself in.

>I reiterate, the setting of the story is the fifties SF
>mythos, not reality. BTW, I think that's why the ship isn't
>coasting - a residual Aristotelianism whereby motion entails
>some sort of propulsion, whether decelerative or otherwise.

>Lew Mammel, Jr.

See above for some groundless but basically sound speculation as to why
he wasn't coasting.

[David Thomas Richard Given]

In article <JMC.97Fe...@Steam.stanford.edu>,
John McCarthy <j...@cs.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
[...]
>Do you seriously think NASA's safety waivers put astronauts in as much
>danger as 17th thru early 20th century were? Scott and his entire
>expedition to the South Pole perished - to take a 20th century
>example.
[...]

So did the crew of _Challenger_.

I think it's a valid comparison. It's a dangerous, highly experimental
business. If something goes wrong, they're on their own. AFAIK, there is
*no* way in which a shuttle, stranded in orbit, can be rescued before
they run out of life support, unless a shuttle happens to be on the pad
for some other reason.

--
------------------- http://www-hons-cs.cs.st-and.ac.uk/~dg --------------------
If you're up against someone more intelligent than you are, do something
totally insane and let him think himself to death. --- Pyanfar Chanur
---------------- Sun-Earther David Daton Given of Lochcarron ------------------

[John Schilling]

p...@clark.net (pat) writes:

>In article <5e3cct$l...@clark.net>, dmpa...@clark.net says...
>>
>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:

>>>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>>>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
>>
>>Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
>>from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
>>its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>>

>Typical Narrow-minded, failure seeking Aero-space engineer.

Actually, most of us seek success, not failure. As 99.999+% of
the aircraft which take off on a given day do in fact land
safely at the end of their journey, I think we do a pretty
good job.

>Okay, so this is a shuttle, What does it do once it makes
>planetary landfall, turn into a gazebo?

>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces

>a much larger takeoff load.

This confirms what I have suspected from the start.

YOU HAVEN'T READ THE STORY YOU ARE DENOUNCING.

Sorry for shouting, but the intellectual dishonesty underlying this
fact is staggering. To assert that you are qualified to denounce a
story as implauisble, and by implication its author as incompetent,
when you haven't *read* the story, is absurd.

In the story, it is quite explicity stated early on, that not only
is the spacecraft in question "launched" in space rather than from
a planetary surface, but that it is strictly a one-use, expendable
craft for emergency operations.

When it lands, it *does* turn into a gazeebo. Or, more appropriately,
an emergency shelter. It *never* "gasses up, loads cargo, and leaves
the planet". As such, the greatest loads it will ever face occur
during landing.

--
*John Schilling * "You can have Peace, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * or you can have Freedom. *
*University of Southern California * Don't ever count on having both *
*Aerospace Engineering Department * at the same time." *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * - Robert A. Heinlein *
*(213)-740-5311 or 747-2527 * Finger for PGP public key *

[John Schilling]

p...@clark.net (pat) writes:

>In article <5e31ir$9...@spock.usc.edu>, schi...@spock.usc.edu says...
>>
>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>>
>>
>>>Physical laws are what they are, but we still can alter the
>>>scenario. Obviously the cold equations must have been written
>>>before Apollo 13. The simple physical study of the Apollo 13
>>>accident was of an unsurvivable event. The CM had insufficient
>>>power to survive, and the LEM had insufficient resources for 3 men.
>>
>>
>>And a "simple physical study" shows this?

>sure. The LEM was designed to support 2 men for 48 hours,
>not 3 men for 96. Power, water, Co2 absorption were all
>insufficient.

The LEM was designed to support two men in the top 5% of the
population in both body mass and metabolic rate, for 48 hours
of moderate to heavy physcial activity, with absolutely no
adverse health effects of any kind.

How long will such a life-support system suffice for three
random men deliberately seeking to minimize oxygen consumption,
and willing to suffer any effects of anoxia or acute carbpon
dioxide poisoning short of actual death?

Hint #1: The answer is *not* (2*48)/3 = 32 hours

Hint #2: The answer cannot be given with accuracy better than +/-50%

>>>any cargo ship without 100 Kg of disposable internal fittings,
>>>is a joke.
>>
>>

>>Fine. List for me the 100kg of disposable internal fittings in
>>a Cessna Skywagon modified for range and cargo. The kind of
>>"cargo ship" which, in the real world, might be used for, say,
>>carrying medical supplies to a remote outpost. Your local
>>general-aviation airport can probably set you up with an owner's
>>manual that itemizes the weight of every component, so it shouldn't
>>be too difficult a task.
>>
>>And yes, there is at least one place in such an aircraft where a
>>stowaway could hide, even through a standard preflight inspection.

>Ah, he get's chicken, Internal fittings. Real men will not be limited
>to this.

>Start with.

[wish list of items, many of which are not even present in the A/C
in question]

>now if you are a real macho stud, and not some whining, crying,
>quitter, you get out on the wing and take off the flaps, drives
>and linkages. Speed brakes if they are existent. if that's not
>enough drop the wheels and landing gear struts.

>That is assuming you are macho enough.

This reminds me why the term "macho" is now generally considered to
be an insult, indicating a combination of extreme stupidity and even
more extreme overconfidence.

Were it not for the fact that Cessna 180 aircraft are, unlike yourself,
a valuable and now irreplaceable commodity, I would dearly love to see
you try to remove the wing flaps while in flight. It's a spectacular
way to commit suicide, to be sure.

Hint #3. The attachment fittings for the wing flaps on Cessna's light
singles are not accessable unless the flaps are extended. The flap
extension mechanism does not incorporate any provision for extending
only one flap at a time. Consider the aerodynamics of the aircraft
midway through your proposed stunt, with one flap extended and the
other removed.

At least, that's the way things work in the reality I inhabit. You
apparenly reside in an imaginary realm where a sufficiently "macho"
individual can accomplish absolutely anything they set their mind to.

I am insufficiently familiar with the physical laws (if any) in your
realm to continue this debate on those terms,

[pat]

In article <5ea0og$t...@van1s03.cyberion.com>,
no_spam_s...@wwdc.com says...

>
>In article <5e4kcc$d...@clarknet.clark.net>, p...@clark.net (pat) says:
>>

>>In article <5e3cct$l...@clark.net>, dmpa...@clark.net says...
>>>
>>>p...@clark.net (pat) writes:
>>>
>>>>All possible weight? Gee that must mean Landing loads onthe
>>>>vehicle are far greater then takeoff loads.
>>>
>>>Yes they were. The ship in question was a small ship launched
>>>from a larger ship. It couldn't lift off from a planet under
>>>its own power, so there's no reason to make it strong enough to.
>>
>>Typical Narrow-minded, failure seeking Aero-space engineer.

>>Okay, so this is a shuttle, What does it do once it makes
>>planetary landfall, turn into a gazebo?
>

>Typical short-sighted, fault-seeking critic. :) It isn't a shuttle.
>It's an Emergency Dispatch Ship, designed to be as light as possible.
>It probably operates on the Dorito(tm) principle; launch all you want,
>we'll just make more. (There are *enormous* weight-savings when you
>make something disposable.)
>

ah, so the story creates the perfect scenario. a ship deep in space,
without enough mass for a high Delta -V shuttle, carries the
penalty mass for an emergency dispatch ship, meant to travel
long range, one way, planetary landing missions, with the
optimal cargo space for a lightweight medical cargo of say
20 Kg, and said deep space ship is at the maximum range of
the dispatch ship, stripped to bare bones????

ANy thing else we can add to the scenario? How about an
exploding Cryo Oxygen tank????

>>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
>>a much larger takeoff load.
>

>No, it doesn't, because it never takes off again. The pilot would
>probably be retrieved by a reusable shuttle launched by a
later-arriving
>FTL transport, either a scheduled supply run or a more-fully equipped
>relief ship depending upon the nature of the emergency.

Note the Probably.

So you don't actually know?

Thank you.

[John Moreno]

Graham Wills <gwi...@research.bell-labs.com> wrote:

-snip-
]
] I believe they were in contravention of a real live law - not just a
] lawyer's opinion. McDonalds had not just received complaints from
] customers, but had been legally warned that they were in contravention
] of the law. They apparently ignored these warninigs.

Just to butt in with a couple of quick facts:

1) They HAD NOT been *legally* warned. They had been SUED, repeatedly.

2) There was no law saying how hot the coffee could be. This would have
made the OTHER 700 cases a slam dunk and they would have changed their
policy long before this women was burned.

3) McD's coffee was over 40 degree's hotter than other fast food coffee,
which the plaintiffs attorney argued (successfully) created a
"expectation" of the appropriate temperature.

4) SHE underestimated the degree of risk, which IMHO doesn't make McD's
liable even with the extensive damage that she suffered (3rd degree
burns).

5) Contrary to popular opinion she wasn't behind the wheel she was in
the passenger seat.

--
John Moreno

[yon lew]

p...@clark.net (pat) writes:

It was an emergency. If we're going to speculate about the background of
the story, why not speculate that the ship was being pushed to it's outer
limits to reach a planet at a range outside of what it was designed for?

>>>when it gasses up, loads cargo and leaves the planet, it faces
>>>a much larger takeoff load.
>>
>>No, it doesn't, because it never takes off again. The pilot would
>>probably be retrieved by a reusable shuttle launched by a
>later-arriving
>>FTL transport, either a scheduled supply run or a more-fully equipped
>>relief ship depending upon the nature of the emergency.

>Note the Probably.

>So you don't actually know?

>Thank you.

It's a story, it doesn't say, there's this thing called willing
suspension of disbelief, read what James Gunn had to say about critics of
TCE.

[Edward A Gedeon]

In article <5e5eul$a...@ssbunews.ih.lucent.com>, l...@ihgp167e.ih.lucent.com (-Mammel,L.H.) writes:
>
> Also, FYI, sometime before Apollo 11, LEM was dropped in favor
> of LM ( Lunar Excursion Module -> Lunar Module ) but
> it continued to be referred to orally as the "Lem", and
> LEM survives by virtue of its lexicographical utility in
> crossword puzzles. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There should be a term for this type of word. How about,
"Crucinym (n): a word which is not in common usage, but appears
frequently in crossword puzzles."

To get back on topic, I read "The Cold Equations" years ago, and my
first reaction was that you wouldn't get *me* to pilot a ship with
that little margin. What if the pilot has to land in a heavy
crosswind? I know, the point of the story is that any new frontier is
not a safe fuzzy warm cuddly place; it's damn dangerous. But still,
the author could have made his point a little more effectively.
--
Ed Gedeon, Delco Electronics | "'Twas honest old Noah first planted the Vine,
Above opinions are mine alone | And bettered his Morals by drinking its Wine;
DNRC O- _____________________| He justly the drinking of Water decried;
_________| For he knew that all Mankind, by drinking it, died." --B. Franklin