>
> Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> This reminds me of the kind of talk you hear
> all the time about cops.....laying their lives
> on the line, etc.
Cops sure have got that self-advertisement thing down. Americans sure do suck it up. It fits with what Mencken called our "libido for the ugly." Sometimes I feel sorry for cops. That God damn teevee has turned their brains to soup.
> That's what you signed up for isn't it? You
> never hear anyone going on about lumberjacks
> laying their lives on the line even though
> they are 27 more times more likely to die on
> the job than workers in all other occupations
> combined.
>
> [WS:] That is not exactly correct. Lumping
> together "all occupation" some of which have
> very low fatality rates conceals the fact
> that there are some occupational groups with
> higher fatality rates than lumberjacks. The
> occupation with highest fatality rate is
> fisheries and fishery workers 118.4 per 100k
> employed), logging workers are second (92.9
> per 100k employed)
So by "some" you mean "one"! Anyway, my job is roughly as likely to get me killed as a cop's job. That's really one of the most appealing aspects of it, in fact; who wants to live forever? Thirty years back I used to be a convenience store clerk, though, and my death expectancy then was sixty percent higher than it is when I'm out stepping over rattlesnakes or dodging front end loaders today.
Yours WD "fearless" K - WKiernan at gmail.com