{which way do you run, towards the free gas or away as far as your feet can take you?}

http://www.news.com.au/news/fu...ehlez2-1226424980900

This points out several differences between 1st world and 3rd world thinking and sensibilities.

I can't imagine folks in the US walking across gas soaked ground to scoop fuel into whatever containers they had handy. Even at $6.00 a gallon.

Natural Selection!!!

If Obama had gas, that's what it would look like.

About 30 years ago a friend of mine name of Charlie Johnson had a gas station in Round Rock,Texas.One day a tanker was filling the tanks (his station was right on the town square).Some idiot (as best as we can figure) dropped or lit a cigarette. Now,I will buy that truck driver a beer + a supper anytime.He turned around + came back + pulled that tanker away from the town square.Man ought to get a medal or at least recognition,it would have taken out the whole downtown....Charlie ran back into the station looking for others.He took 2 days to die in the Corpus burn ward.He was my friend.

Tragic accident, it says that the tanker tipped over but the burning tanker in the pic looks to be upright.
Norman, sorry to hear about your friend even though it was long ago. My Daughter goes to South Western University and we have been on the square in Round Rock a few times. Absolutely love those donuts in Round Rock.


Steve E.............

Friend from high school, had a great milsurp collection back then, joined the USMC, ended up a preacher in Round Rock. He'd be about 60, now.

Thanks Steve,I'm an S.U. alumni myself.Next time you're visiting your daughter check out the copper weather vane on the steeple of the Administration building. I built that as well as the dome + finials on the old Masonic Lodge on the Georgetown Square.

quote:

Tragic accident, it says that the tanker tipped over but the burning tanker in the pic looks to be upright.

The pic is NOT of the accident in the article but rather of one in 2010, as is explained below it.

Poverty killed those motorcycle taxi drivers. Tough conditions when someone will risk their life for a tank of gas.

quote:

Poverty killed those motorcycle taxi drivers. Tough conditions when someone will risk their life for a tank of gas.

Why blame someone's stupid actions onto something or someone else?

And why was it poverty rather than blind greed and total lack of forethought that killed them?

quote:

Originally posted by Philip A.:

quote:

Poverty killed those motorcycle taxi drivers. Tough conditions when someone will risk their life for a tank of gas.

Why blame someone's stupid actions onto something or someone else?

And why was it poverty rather than blind greed and total lack of forethought that killed them?

Seems to me that you're blaming "blind greed and total lack of forethought" instead of poverty. I suppose that might be a shorthand for "they're black, so they don't consider the consequences."

AFA your second "point" goes, I am quite sure they knew the dangers and were taking a chance with their lives to get a few dollars worth of "free" gas. Most rational people, and I believe they were rational, won't do that unless driven by extreme need.

Having lived a significant number of years in the region where the facts occurred, and knowing first hand what is the reality of life there, my comments are unfortunately driven by knowledge of the local cicumstances.

I am blaming "blind greed", because I know from hard earned life experience that what drove people to rush to the tanker was the simple fact that there was something for free to grab.

I am blaming total lack of forethought, because if the same people had spent a tenth of a second thinking about the consequences of their acts, or simply reminiscing the scores of similar events that have happened there with the same fiery consequences, they'd have refrained from jumping in a pool of gasoline in a simmering heat.

Sorry if this does not correspond to the comforting vision of the world one may have from very far, far away.

And, by the way... nowhere in my comments I mentioned the ethnicity of the people involved. Were they yellow, red, pink, or light blue, the qualifiers for their actions would remain the same.

Now, what if we returned the question to the sender? I am under the vague impression that your comments were a shorthand for "They're black, so they're poor", with the unspoken corollary "And we have to help them". Quite patronizing, isn't it?

quote:

Now, what if we returned the question to the sender? I am under the vague impression that your comments were a shorthand for "They're black, so they're poor", with the unspoken corollary "And we have to help them". Quite patronizing, isn't it?

And, not for the first time in this thread, you'd be wrong. However, vague is a fine word to use describing your reasoning.

I may be wrong, granted. But I won't know it unless you enlighten me...

However, we are discussing about the reality on the ground in Nigeria - which I happen to know quite well, thank you very much - and not about the idiosyncrasies of rural life in Western Texas - which I do not know well, and therefore abstain from commenting upon.