Determining who the asshole is, and visualizing impersonal statistics

[pmb]

In any given situation, the person who is claiming that something is the end of the world is almost certainly an asshole. This is a handy rule of thumb, and applies pretty well across the board, with the possible exception of people talking about global thermonuclear war or other extinction-level threats (large asteroids, etc).

Also, the recent news that nobody seems to be talking about is that according to every peer-reviewed independent study, we have now killed more than 1,000,000 people in Iraq, either directly or indirectly, since 2003 as a result of this war. That is a lot of people - one six-thousandth of the world population, and 4% of the population of Iraq. Visualizing this from an Iraqi point of view resulted in this map. But honestly, this sort of number is way past "visualization" territory. Our government has, in the past 6 years, spent more than $500,000,000,000 on a stupid war, and this war has caused more than 1,000,000 people to die.

One million people. Dead. For what?

Comments

[pmb.livejournal.com]

Alternatively, I think that we could have given each of them $250,000 (assuming 50% distribution costs) not to attack us ever and the result would have been a lot better.

[djsendai.livejournal.com]

cue patrissimo to explain why a private, non-government solution would've been cheaper & more efficient ;)

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

That one is kinda tough to enforce, actually. Maybe buy them infrastructure? Set up free hospitals instead of embargoing medical supplies?

Not like it really matters, since there were no significant threats coming from Iraq (as opposed to Saudi Arabia or whatever).

[djsendai.livejournal.com]

oh i was thinking that the free-enterprise solution could've found a hitman-solution at cheaper than 500K/head ;)

but i think the "pay them off to leave us alone" would've been much cheaper in the long run, and improved our standing.

What we're doing here, uhm, I can't see that we're getting any long-term benefit anywhere.