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... like something from an old Bond movie

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-37103668

Three people, including two children, have died after their throats were slit by glass-coated strings used for flying kites on India's Independence Day.
Saanchi Goyal, 3, and Harry, 4, were looking out through the sunroof of their cars in different parts of Delhi when sharp strings slit their throats.
Zafar Khan, 22, died in the same manner when he was riding his motorbike.
Many Indians fly kites to celebrate festivals and important occasions like the Independence Day.
A policeman in Delhi also suffered injuries from a sharp string, locally known as manja, on Monday.
The Delhi government has now banned the use of sharp strings to fly kites and promised to run campaigns to educate people about the dangers of using such strings.
Most people use glass-coated strings to bring down competitors' kites, but the tactic also ends up injuring and killing people.
Similar strings killed a five-year-old boy in 2015 in the northern town of Moradabad, and a five-year-old girl died in Jaipur in 2014.

grim.

I've been waiting for this to happen. Fighting kites were a thing a long time ago, and people just get careless, or have a lack of responsibility.

Was Dethklok playing a show? Indian Independence Day is so fething metal @_@

Destroying rivals kites. Ok, if India is this competitive, why are they sucking hard at the Olympics despite their huge blood pool to draw from.

Too busy funneling nag the funds to their space program?

 Orlanth wrote:
Destroying rivals kites. Ok, if India is this competitive, why are they sucking hard at the Olympics despite their huge blood pool to draw from.

Kites (and kite battles) have been a huge a huge part of that region of the world for a long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite#Asia

Horrible tragedies. Careless people causing problems for others.

Mad Max kite battles? India, well done.

Wait, glass coated string? How does that sound like even a remotely good idea? And to actively destroy other people's property? It doesn't even have a justification!

 jmurph wrote:
Wait, glass coated string? How does that sound like even a remotely good idea? And to actively destroy other people's property? It doesn't even have a justification!

Again, read the wiki link I posted. Kite fighting is a big thing in south central asia.

Wow, add another entry into the book of "Crappy ways I don't want to die."...

 Orlanth wrote:
Destroying rivals kites. Ok, if India is this competitive, why are they sucking hard at the Olympics despite their huge blood pool to draw from.

Err, the massive poverty and lack of focus on competitive sports through school and college?

 Orlanth wrote:
Destroying rivals kites. Ok, if India is this competitive, why are they sucking hard at the Olympics despite their huge blood pool to draw from.

Because kite flying hasn't become an Olympic event... I'm sure there is a group pushing for an event in 2020

That's horrible. If people do insist on using those glass-coated strings, they should at least fly their kites away from people. No one should be killed by a child's toy, for God's sake!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Destroying rivals kites. Ok, if India is this competitive, why are they sucking hard at the Olympics despite their huge blood pool to draw from.

Err, the massive poverty and lack of focus on competitive sports through school and college?

India has massive poverty because it has gross inequality, not lack of wealth. There are a lot of affluent Indians, their middle class is a least he size of the population of a large European country.
While there are villages that still rely on donkeys as the main form of transport, there is also a sizable tech industry and space program. India is no lightweight, and has potential to be a global power in this century.
Glass coated kite lines are probably not cheap also.

 jmurph wrote:
Wait, glass coated string? How does that sound like even a remotely good idea? And to actively destroy other people's property? It doesn't even have a justification!

If you are kite fighting, that's precisely what you do, and traditionally, you would grind the glass yourself - it is not a hard process, nor expensive, just time-consuming. But if you have nothing better to do, spending a couple afternoons preparing a fighting string isn't a bad use of one's time. In the modern era, there is demand, so people will make this stuff so you can just buy it.

The stupid part is that they are doing this in the middle of a giant city, vs over some empty hillside / field like their (grand-)parents did 50 years ago. Because overpopulation.

The risk calculus it's no different from when your (grand-)parents shot off 4th of July Roman candles from their backyards and block parties, before things got all overbuilt with houses everywhere.

But the destruction is no different than entering a destruction derby of some sort. Simply by putting your kite up, you're accepting the implied risk that some fighter will cut it down.

 Orlanth wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Destroying rivals kites. Ok, if India is this competitive, why are they sucking hard at the Olympics despite their huge blood pool to draw from.

Err, the massive poverty and lack of focus on competitive sports through school and college?

India has massive poverty because it has gross inequality, not lack of wealth. There are a lot of affluent Indians, their middle class is a least he size of the population of a large European country.
While there are villages that still rely on donkeys as the main form of transport, there is also a sizable tech industry and space program. India is no lightweight, and has potential to be a global power in this century.
Glass coated kite lines are probably not cheap also.

Which is why I said "the massive poverty and lack of focus on competitive sports through school and college". There are a lot of people in India who are well off, but they still don't have the huge sporting emphasis you get in other countries so the "blood pool to draw from" is actually pretty small.

Also it depends massively on how you define "middle class". Some definitions result in 100's of millions of people being middle class because it encompasses anyone who pulls in more than $2 PPP per day, other definitions it's only 20-30 million. India is a cheap place to live, but there's a huge portion of people who work long hours 6 or 7 days a week and only barely get by with the help of their family.

Just because you are earning enough to be classified as middle class doesn't mean you can afford the free time to spend time in the gym, at the track, in the pool, etc to become a world class athlete.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/indian-middle-class-is-24-million-not-264-million-credit-suisse-115102900181_1.html

http://qz.com/578793/indias-middle-class-is-almost-impossible-to-define/

You also have the rampant corruption which stops people who might get in to college on merit in western countries getting ahead in life.

It probably also doesn't help that a large portion of the country is so polluted that if you tried to run a marathon you'd be coughing up black stuff for the next year.

I'd rather be working class in Australia or the US than middle class in India, and I say that as someone who is half Indian and a large portion of my family live in India. You'd have to pay me a lot to convince me to move to India.

People complain about health and safty laws, how businesses and people should be aloud to do what they want, let the marked decide, and that people should be responsible for their actions etc. India is evidence of what happens when you have no health and safety.

Yes, the oft repeated call for unrestricted H&S laws?

There are daft things that H&S does call for (I see allot of it in construction - helmets to be worn by workers ) but I have never heard anyone ask for people to do what they want.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 jmurph wrote:
Wait, glass coated string? How does that sound like even a remotely good idea? And to actively destroy other people's property? It doesn't even have a justification!

If you are kite fighting, that's precisely what you do, and traditionally, you would grind the glass yourself - it is not a hard process, nor expensive, just time-consuming. But if you have nothing better to do, spending a couple afternoons preparing a fighting string isn't a bad use of one's time. In the modern era, there is demand, so people will make this stuff so you can just buy it.

The stupid part is that they are doing this in the middle of a giant city, vs over some empty hillside / field like their (grand-)parents did 50 years ago. Because overpopulation.

The risk calculus it's no different from when your (grand-)parents shot off 4th of July Roman candles from their backyards and block parties, before things got all overbuilt with houses everywhere.

But the destruction is no different than entering a destruction derby of some sort. Simply by putting your kite up, you're accepting the implied risk that some fighter will cut it down.

Yeah, I get that. If in a designated area, no problem. But it seems like these are being widely used, and not necessarily in an agreed format where everyone knows that your kite is at risk. So people are basically just being jerks/stupid.

By way of comparison, I also do not support the deployment of small scale explosives in populated areas

Ah, competitive kite-flying. I once found a book detailing how to prepare a kite with my father's childhood junk. Like fireworks though it requires a little common sense: do not fly kites next to roads, do not set off fire works next to the skyscraper. Think silly humans!

 Orlanth wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Destroying rivals kites. Ok, if India is this competitive, why are they sucking hard at the Olympics despite their huge blood pool to draw from.

Err, the massive poverty and lack of focus on competitive sports through school and college?

India has massive poverty because it has gross inequality, not lack of wealth. There are a lot of affluent Indians, their middle class is a least he size of the population of a large European country.
While there are villages that still rely on donkeys as the main form of transport, there is also a sizable tech industry and space program. India is no lightweight, and has potential to be a global power in this century.
Glass coated kite lines are probably not cheap also.

In countries that have experience rapid industrialisation (which includes a lot of Southern and Eastern Asia), there tends to be a greater pressure on those that can afford it to attend university and get a professional career instead of "wasting time" on sports. Parents tend to want their children to do better than them and so push them towards what they consider to be more modern industries. There are also fewer systems in place to help lower income individuals get athletic training.

In already developed countries there is less stigma associated with choosing not to pursue higher education and getting a service job or sports. There are also more scholarships and scouts to identify potential athletes and make sure that they receive the training and aid that they need.

 jmurph wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 jmurph wrote:
Wait, glass coated string? How does that sound like even a remotely good idea? And to actively destroy other people's property? It doesn't even have a justification!

If you are kite fighting, that's precisely what you do, and traditionally, you would grind the glass yourself - it is not a hard process, nor expensive, just time-consuming. But if you have nothing better to do, spending a couple afternoons preparing a fighting string isn't a bad use of one's time. In the modern era, there is demand, so people will make this stuff so you can just buy it.

The stupid part is that they are doing this in the middle of a giant city, vs over some empty hillside / field like their (grand-)parents did 50 years ago. Because overpopulation.

The risk calculus it's no different from when your (grand-)parents shot off 4th of July Roman candles from their backyards and block parties, before things got all overbuilt with houses everywhere.

But the destruction is no different than entering a destruction derby of some sort. Simply by putting your kite up, you're accepting the implied risk that some fighter will cut it down.

Yeah, I get that. If in a designated area, no problem. But it seems like these are being widely used, and not necessarily in an agreed format where everyone knows that your kite is at risk. So people are basically just being jerks/stupid.

By way of comparison, I also do not support the deployment of small scale explosives in populated areas

As a person who spends an inordinate amount of his income on his home, I am not a fan of flying pyrotechnics, nor flying explosives, either. My town has a "Zero Tolerance" on this sort of thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 the Signless wrote:
In countries that have experience rapid industrialisation (which includes a lot of Southern and Eastern Asia), there tends to be a greater pressure on those that can afford it to attend university and get a professional career instead of "wasting time" on sports. Parents tend to want their children to do better than them and so push them towards what they consider to be more modern industries. There are also fewer systems in place to help lower income individuals get athletic training.

In already developed countries there is less stigma associated with choosing not to pursue higher education and getting a service job or sports. There are also more scholarships and scouts to identify potential athletes and make sure that they receive the training and aid that they need.

OTOH, Indians seem to spend an awful lot of time playing Cricket, and that seems to be a rather time-consuming sport. In fact, I think it's one of the few that are more leisurely than American Baseball. Or Golf.

Perhaps they should learn to play something a bit more manly, like Sevens. In theory, with 1.25 billion Indians, you'd think they'd be able to scrape together a few Sikhs with the balls to challenge the All Blacks...