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Leiningen vs. the yellowjackets

A Wellesley man recounts his and his daughter's mad dash to safety after a swarm of hundreds of the angry wasps attacked them in the woods on Sunday - and then just kept coming after them. And, of course, being a Wellesley resident, he paused in the middle to pick up after their dog on a neighbor's front yard (which got him a bonus sting right in the eye).


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Comments

I feel so bad that happened to you & your daughter. But mistlyr you 'cause being the good samaritan you are & picking up after your dog, those nasty little fellas stung you again & in the eye to boot. I pray neither one of you is allergic to them. I pray you get better soon.

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Although I'm betting you get an awful lot of blank stares and "Huh?"s

Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com

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He's lucky to be alive!
This is something I fear - I spend lots of time hiking, and have encountered a few yellow jackets, but never in that number.

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Leiningen vs. the yellowjackets

I found a bunch of sports teams named Yellow Jackets until I found a site that is army ant specific...where I read this, 'don't kill any ants as when they die they'll release pheromones which will further signal an alarm. '

Like in the movie Alien...you don't dare kill it?

As a public service announcement to everyone:

https://kottke.org/18/08/a-comprehensive-guide-to-yellow-stripey-things

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Read that story as a pre-teen in a book my mother had of short horror stories and later loved the movie because of Charlton Heston (it was what Naked Jungle ? or something.... so strange to see it here..

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That's cute that he thinks the UK has a "free" health care system.

And I say this as someone who thinks the solution to uninsured/underinsured people in this country is a single payer system. Such a system is by no means "free."

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He wasn't talking about "free" as in it's 100% altruistic but "free" as in the sense that, oh, people who need care don't have to pay to see a doctor or still worry about making up co-pays and deductibles even here in Romneycare Central.

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Maybe, but that's not the plain language of what he wrote. So, how do you know what he meant? Maybe he thinks it's actually free.

Which gets to my point - what he wrote is the very same (incorrect) view people espouse all the time: college should be "free" for everyone, health care should be "free", etc. It's wrong and it's a fundamental mischaracterization of such systems funded by taxpayer money. Doctors and nurses don't work for free. Hospitals, doctors' offices, MRI machines, X-rays, etc. are not free. NHS is not free and, instead, is funded by taxation. There are also caps on raises and spending. If NHS was free, there would be no caps. His mischaracterization perpetuates a common misconception that it's possible to make such systems free. Heck, Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan would cost $34 TRILLION dollars.

That's my point. Nothing is free. Someone is paying somewhere, individually or collectively.

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Go read his account again and look at the context of his "free" comment. That he mentioned the NHS at all was to make a joke about his interaction with a nurse in a hospital here, about the care he, as an individual, was getting, not to make some wider philosophical point. His entire article was remarkably light-hearted given what he'd been through.

As for your point, yes, yes, you're right - money for the British health-care system comes from somewhere. But I really think you're getting a bit carried away with imputing some remarkable lack of awareness on this guy's part.

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They thought it would save a bunch of money - but that means little profit.

Don't you have some nurse's special meetup on mandatory staffing levels to go spew at?

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Do you also go into rants when someone says the T costs $2.25? Or when Ben and Jerry's has Free Cone Day?

Something is free if the price is 0. The underlying mechanism of how the thing is provided doesn't matter.

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Angry WASP’s have been a long-running problem in Wellesley. I’ve been chased out of town by several of them clad in Ralph Lauren a few times.

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