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Football, Cannons and Small Minds [update]
ALocksly
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
No one seems to be hollering abou this over here yet so in case you havent heard
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16292681/
Boy gets his leg nearly blown off by ceremonial cannon at a football game AND...
He is NOT airlifted to a trauma center. The game is NOT cancelled. The numerous people in the town ARE threatening the boy and his family to keep quiet about it so as to preserve their tradition of shooting a cannon off at football games.
All I can really say is that this is just sick, particularly thinking about how the family must feel to have their town turn so vicious on them like that.
edit: linky
So, its loaded with pre-measured charges (some have claimed that the injured student must have made some mistake in measuring the powder charge)
here's the Fark thread on this
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16292681/
Boy gets his leg nearly blown off by ceremonial cannon at a football game AND...
He is NOT airlifted to a trauma center. The game is NOT cancelled. The numerous people in the town ARE threatening the boy and his family to keep quiet about it so as to preserve their tradition of shooting a cannon off at football games.
According to Karch's medical records, security guards notified police after Karch received disturbing phone calls and visits from parents and students, some of whom threatened to "break his other leg" or worse, if he didn't keep quiet about the accident. Hospital staff had to move him to a secure room where they monitored visitors.
Callers and visitors told Karch they would "make sure his other leg got blown off," and that "there would be retaliation" if the family cooperated in an investigation that could end the cannon tradition, said Mary Bissel, Karch's mother. "That's when I kind of got a little upset," Karch said.
All I can really say is that this is just sick, particularly thinking about how the family must feel to have their town turn so vicious on them like that.
edit: linky
Students wear safety glasses and gloves as they stuff two nylon bags, each filled with about 1.7 ounces of gunpowder, into the cannon's barrel. An adult adds the lid.
"To fire it, it's like flipping a light switch. There's nothing to it," Mack said. "It's very simple."
So, its loaded with pre-measured charges (some have claimed that the injured student must have made some mistake in measuring the powder charge)
here's the Fark thread on this
Yes,... yes, I agree. It's totally unfair that sober you gets into trouble for things that drunk you did.
ALocksly on
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What's amazing is that despite the fact that they found a stress fracture in the 20-year old cannon that was made as a part of a high-school shop project, they still fired it. Whut?
See, I used to fire a slightly larger black powder cannon at a boy scout camp for flag ceremonies.
We had the thing X-Rayed regularly and we also knew what it's maximum load was and we NEVER exceeded 50% of that.
We also had a LONG cord for the detonater so we were about 20ft away when we did it. The pic I saw on Fark shows them standing right behind the damn thing.
I put this thing squarely on the shoulders of the school.
Nice.
Though, is the town so stupid that they can't come up with some kind of safety precaution, like having profesionals or members of the fire department, or someone not a part of the school come and shoot off the canon so they can keep their tradition? All threatening the family is going to accomplish is having a larger chance of them losing the tradition, and having many people getting police attention for all of these threats.
So here, because I have bullet points strewn all over this house and I've got to get rid of them somehow, is what I think will happen:
*The kid's leg winds up worse than it could have been due to the doctors having to waste resources trying to protect the kid from an angry mob.
*A nationwide outcry from just about everyone that catches wind of the story more or less forces Snohomish to dump the cannon.
*The investigation is going to go forward now, kid or no kid. God help them if someone at any of the networks takes a liking to the story and devotes significant airtime to it. You can't fend off cable news with a blowtorch once they take an interest in you.
*The cannon itself will wind up someplace not on a football field- most likely in an evidence room. No way they're going to get to make a new one.
*The family is going to sue Snohomish for all they're worth. They don't feel like doing it yet, but I assure you they will before very long. They will almost assuredly win.
*Immediately upon winning the case and the leg's recovery, the family, fearing for their safety, moves out of state, taking Snohomish's money with them.
*With the resulting slashed budget, no cannon, and probably minus a few of the players that made the threats (for any of several possible reasons), Snohomish's football team will wind up sucking for at least the next couple seasons.
Long story short, karma is about to smack some people around but good.
clicks link
Article: "SNOHOMISH!"
Me: "Aw, god fuckin' DAMN it!"
I live a few miles from these sick assholes...
The family (as of last check) has no intention of suing and the school itself was organising some fundage for the med bills; however the donations turnout for the town was downright disgusting at best. Neigboring schools and towns easily put them to shame coming up with cash for the kid.
What kind of Fuckwitville is this, again? Do they dump lead wholesale into the water system, or is the widespread stupidity merely the result of traditional inbreeding?
EDIT: It seems Snohomish was just inside the downwind cone of the Asarco smelter, so they might actually have ample portions of lead in their drinking water. Who knows?
Idiocy in the name of tradition (golf)? Check.
Fans rioting in the stands (soccer)? Check.
Bizarrely strict enforcement of rules with no thought of context (NFL)? Check.
Preferential treatment is seemingly non-sports-related areas of society? Check.
Heck, they even make up new ones, such as "Murdering people for the opportunity to cheer for the team."
Wow. All the pieces are coming together. :P
In any case, it's just a bunch of assholes in a shitty town being jerks because high school football is all they have to look forward to in their horrible lives.
And nobody thought enough of this sudden, unexpected behavior to think any more about it.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I live in Seattle. Snohomish is still "here" though, relatively speaking.
Wow. Buncha sharp folks in Snohomish, eh?
Good blackberries, though.
The thing that really confuses me is that they wanted him and his family to keep quiet about something that happened live in front of a (presumably) large audience. It would be like trying to hush up a graduation ceremony.
Well, OK, that's ONE of the things that confuses me about this.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
seriously, though... they shouldn't treat this kid like it's his fault
Holy shit. What a bunch of fuckheads. That family needs to sue that school for millions, bleeding them out of every cent that they can, so that the rest of the town gets stuck footing the bills via property tax, then move to another state.
If there's any justice in the world, they won't be able to afford a football team, anymore.
In this case it would probably have to be "hop it off" or "crawl it off"
In any case, this is pretty fucked up. But being so invested in high school sports that you have a cannon is just totally alien to me anyways. High school and university/college sports are nowhere near as big a deal in Canada as in the US.
I can understand caring about local sports, well not understand but I can acknowledge it happens, at least to the point where all kinds of weird traditions build up around it.
But the idea of not just a few people, but everyone in the town, caring so much about it that the reaction to a kid getting his leg blown to hell is to becoming enraged to the point of sending him death threats because his devastating injury shows devastating injuries can occur when you rig up a cannon in shop class boggles the mind.
from the mayor of Snohomish comes this damage control statement, rumoured to be in response to the floods of hate mail and boycotts of shopping in the town.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/296972_snohomish26.html?source=mypi
Of note is that his account of the towns behavior after the inccident appears somewhat different from that described in the origional article.
Specifically that he claims that only "one or two" people were involved in the harassment and claiming that most of the community was unaware that the incident had occured at all.
I must call BS on that last one. In a town that small, having a longstanding tradition blow up on the football field would probably get noticed.