Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede

[Simon]

A Wal-Mart. worker died early Friday after an "out-of-control" mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store's front doors and trampled him, police said.

The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.

When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/1...mart_after.html

That is just frakked up! :yuck:

[brettbh]

That is just frakked up!

Yup. The sad thing is that, had this happened in any other country, the worker would probably have escaped with some minor bruising. But, it happened in the US and ... well, that's what doomed him. He'd have stood a better chance of survival had he been facing a herd of stampeding hippopotamuses.

[Simon]

Yup. The sad thing is that, had this happened in any other country, the worker would probably have escaped with some minor bruising. But, it happened in the US and ... well, that's what doomed him. He'd have stood a better chance of survival had he been facing a herd of stampeding hippopotamuses.

Yea, that was my first thought.. It's sad that the American stereotypes so often come true... :huh:

[brettbh]

Yea, that was my first thought.. It's sad that the American stereotypes so often come true...

Yup.

To digress somewhat, the last time I caught a flight in the US my baggage had slightly too much weight for which I was, of course, charged an additional amount. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have objected. But checking in at the next desk was a big lard-arse who, despite weighing more than me and my baggage combined, wasn't made to pay an additional charge. I pointed the irony out to the check-in person and was informed that it was simply a matter of policy and that super-sized people only needed to pay extra if they were so large as to require an additional seat. I considered claiming that this constituted racial discrimination (I had to pay more than the American, despite the fact that I was bringing less weight onto the plane) but decided that it would probably be best to let the matter drop before my extremely embarrassed decided to batter me to death with one of our overweight suitcases.

This does, however, raise a valid question: are fat people bad for the environment? I mean, it must take more gas to get a plane full of butterballs across the Atlantic than a plane full of regular sized people. And the same applies to other forms of public transportation too. Which leads to the question of whether or not a “tubby tax†would be in order. Should the obese be made to pay more to travel? This would have a number of benefits:

1. Gas consumption would be reduced as fat people would be encouraged to either get thin or travel less;

2. Obesity-related illnesses would be reduced leading to cuts in health care spending;

3. Current discriminatory practices would be eliminated.

Thoughts?

[Steve_Barker]

Yup.

1. Gas consumption would be reduced as fat people would be encouraged to either get thin or travel less;

2. Obesity-related illnesses would be reduced leading to cuts in health care spending;

3. Current discriminatory practices would be eliminated.

Thoughts?

Can see where you are coming from, but people should be able to be happy, and respected, no matter what race, creed, colour, sexual orientation, health, or size. I have linked in a Wiki article on this subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sizeism

Store crushes are not just an American thing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4252421.stm

[Simon]

brettbh, where do you come from? :)

[brettbh]

brettbh, where do you come from?

Here!

Store crushes are not just an American thing:

Indeed. But the telling thing is that the UK crush resulted in people being injured. The US crush, OTOH, resulted is somebody being squashed to death. Which really supports what I said above: "had this happened in any other country, the worker would probably have escaped with some minor bruising."

Can see where you are coming from, but people should be able to be happy, and respected, no matter what race, creed, colour, sexual orientation, health, or size.

Yup, of course they should and my comments were not meant to be taken particularly seriously :-)

The Wikipedia article to which you linked mentioned that, "In 2006, the CDC estimated that 10 percent of current health care costs are due to obesity." The article also mentioned that, "A Dutch study concluded that lifetime cost of obesity are less as these individuals die at an earlier age, while obese individuals have higher annual health care costs." But, whether obesity costs society more than it saves is not the point.

The obesity epidemic is, IMO, simply a reflection of the fact that people are becoming increasingly sedentary and apathetic. Too many people spend way too much time sitting in front of TV and/or computer screens while spooning in takeout food - and those things become disproportionately and unhealthily important to them. People are outraged and compain to the TV stations if a program is rescheduled (seriously, stations in the US were bombarded with complaints when they rescheduled programs because of the election) but will take no action whatsoever if a local area of woodland is zoned for construction. And why should they care about the woodland when it's not a resource which they either use or enjoy?

Here's some anecdotal evidence to support the contention that obese people are less likely to be politically active: do a Google image search for "protesters", "environmental rally" or some similar form of words. How many obese people do you see among the crowds. Hardly any, right?

To my mind, the problem is not so much obesity as it is the state-of-mind and apathetic attitudes that result in obesity.

Did you see the movie WALL-E? Hmmm ...