deaths

How Albert Camus, the great symbol of the philosophy of the absurd, had the most absurd of deaths

by

There are times when the line between tragedy, irony, absurdity and cruelty is so fine that it is almost impossible to appreciate it. It happened on the afternoon of January 4, 1960 in the Route Nationale 5 of France, near the town of Villeblevinin Burgundy, when a luxury car left the road and crashed into a plane tree. The impact was so violent that it immediately killed one of its occupants, the famous writer Albert Camus. That’s the tragic part of the story. The ironic (or cruel, who knows) thing is that this absurd death silenced a writer who had stood out precisely for its depth when analyzing the meaninglessness of the human condition. A fateful change of plans They say that Albert Camus he didn’t like them cars or speed. True or not, the reality is that his initial idea to return to Paris after spending the Christmas holidays in Lourmarin was to take a train. Even came to buy the ticket, which according to some versions he had in his pocket at the time of his death. If he finally chose to travel by road it was because Michel Gallimardhis friend and editor, convinced him to return with him and his family aboard his brand new Facel Vegaa French luxury car brand that fell in love, inter aliato Pablo Picasso, Ava Gardner or James Dean. That change of itinerary (now we know) was a blunder. On the afternoon of January 4, 1960, while driving through Burgundy, Gallimard’s Facel Vega FV3B suffered a puncture that caused it to lurch, according to a reconstruction published at the time by the magazine L’Automobile and rescued in 1961 by Atlantic. What exactly happened? The left rear tire is believed to have burst. The tire slid on the asphalt. The right front wheel went into a ditch. And the car went to the side. The Facel Vega ended up hitting a tree. The impact was so strong that the vehicle spun and suffered a second collision against another of the plane trees that flanked the road. The scene, which the drivers of National Route Number 5 soon approached, gives an idea of ​​the violence of the accident: the engine and gearbox were thrown and the chassis ended up twisted. As for the people who were traveling on board, they all suffered the impact, but not to the same extent. Gallimard’s wife and daughter were bleeding after being thrown from the back of the car, although they were well enough to call the family pet. The driver was unconscious, so he had to be taken to the hospital, where despite all attempts to save his life (he was even transferred from Villeneuve-la-Guyard to Paris) he died days later. The worst off was Camus, who was traveling as a passenger in the right front seat. After the first crash and lurch, the Facel Vega was bounced and hit a second log, which hit the door located right next to the writer. It is believed that he died instantly. When the reporters began to arrive at the scene, after learning that this was not just another accident, but the accident that had deprived French literature of one of its great promises, they found a destroyed dashboard that left two figures to remember: the clock, whose hands marked 1:54; and a speedometer stuck at 145 km/hwhich raises the question to what extent speed played a key role in the tire blowout. “Unforeseen and absurd” Although Camus was only 46 years old (he had turned two months earlier) he was already a celebrity inside and outside France, both for the scope of his literary work and his prestige as an intellectual, activist and philosopher. As if that weren’t enough a few years earlier, in 1957had become the second youngest writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. This great fame explains why French public radio interrupted its musical programming to break the news, which ended up reaching media outlets around the world. The Korean newspaper The Chosun Daily dedicated multiple pages and in Spain the news was picked up by, among others, the newspaper ABCwhose correspondent I remembered that the blow had been so violent that the car was broken into three pieces. The chronicle the firm Federico García-Requena, correspondent in Paris, who chose a headline that went beyond simply informative: “The death, unforeseen and absurd, of Albert Camus.” The term ‘unforeseen’ is obvious, but to understand the term ‘absurd’ (beyond the fact that all deaths on the asphalt are absurd) it is necessary to know more about Camus’ philosophical legacy. If he explored something in his work, both from narrative fiction (‘The Stranger’) and from the philosophical essay (‘The Myth of Sisyphus’), it is the absurdity, the absolute meaninglessness of human existence. Although for the writer of Algerian origin, assuming that maxim is not equivalent to adopting a defeatist attitude. On the contrary: “This essay considers the absurdity, taken until now as a conclusion, as a starting point“, ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ startsperhaps the work in which he deepens his vision of existence the most. “All that can be said is that this world, in itself, is not reasonable. But what is absurd is the confrontation of that irrational and that unbridled desire for clarity whose call resonates in the depths of man,” Camus exposes on the following pages. “The absurd is born from this confrontation between the human call and the unreasonable silence of the world. This is what must not be forgotten. This is what must be clung to, since the entire consequence of a life can be born from it.” Faced with this suffocating reality, Camus reminds us that embracing the absurd is not equivalent to resignation. On the contrary. “This rebellion gives life its value. Extended throughout an entire existence, it restores its greatness. For a man without blinders there is no more beautiful spectacle than that of intelligence in struggle with a reality that surpasses it. The spectacle of human pride … Read more

The three hantavirus deaths on a cruise ship suggest something problematic for something else: the colonization of space

by

What happened on the Argentine cruise ship in which three people died from hantavirus is very sad and, of course, must be investigated. However, many news stories are being read in which it is used to bring to mind bitter pandemic memories and generate an unnecessary stir. The risk for the general population is extremely low, as many experts have been quick to assure. However, it does show how dangerous it can be to let a pathogen circulate in a closed, moving place, like a boat. We can even go a step further now that the space race is in fashion: what would happen if something like this happened on a spaceship? It couldn’t happen. Typically, hantavirus It is transmitted by rodentslike rats and mice. Generally, infection in humans occurs through inhalation of contaminated particles (usually dust) with their feces or urine. This means that, in most cases, the contagion is a zoonosis. The virus passes from an animal to a human. That in space would be impossible. Spaceships are monitored under a magnifying glass, it would be impossible for a mouse to enter without being seen. It is true that there is a specific type of hantavirus, the Andes virus, in which cases have been documented due to human-to-human contact. However, according to has explained to Science Media Center the researcher at the MRC-University of Glasgow Viral Research Center Liam Brierley, contact must be very very close. Contact on spaceships, where a few people must spend a lot of time together in a very small space, would be very close. But don’t panic. Sterility and quarantines. Each of the modules that make up the spacecraft are assembled in white roomsunder strict sterile conditions. Thus, microorganisms, pathogenic or not, are prevented from traveling into space attached to their surfaces. Regarding astronauts, they undergo all kinds of medical examinations to verify that they are not infected with any pathogen. Also, before traveling to space They must spend time in quarantine. This prevents the incubation of something that cannot be detected in medical examinations at the time of starting the journey. It wasn’t always like this. In reality, quarantines began to be implemented after the astronauts of the Apollo 7, 8 and 9 missions had to deal with a cold in space. Although none of them became seriously ill, they did report that the symptoms were especially bothersome in this very different environment. Therefore, it was decided to take even more measures to prevent something like this from happening. The Apollo 7 crew had to deal with a cold. Not all microorganisms stay on land. It is impossible to strip a human being of all the microorganisms that live in his body. The microbiota is the set of microorganisms that are naturally found in our body. Many of them are beneficial for us, as they protect us from pathogens or help us carry out processes such as digestion. All these microorganisms always travel with us, so it is impossible to separate ourselves from them. And even if you could, it would be dangerous to do so. Others that cannot be avoided. Nor can latent viruses be avoided, like shingles. Once a person passes the infection, these remain asleep in the organism. They may never come forward again or they may do so, usually at a time when the immune system is weakened. It has been seen that reactivations of this type of virus are quite common in space and the truth is that it is not rare, since it affects the immune system at many levels. Three basic pillars. Microgravity, cosmic radiation and the stress of being in such an inhospitable place are the three main reasons why the immune system is affected by space travel. Everything in its place. Microorganisms that are completely harmless in a person’s microbiota can be harmful to another individual, either because they are immunosuppressed or because their defenses are not well trained against that organism. enemy. It is something that, for example, happens with many microorganisms on the skin. It should also be taken into account that there are microorganisms that are harmless in some organs, but harmful in others. It occurs, for example, when bacteria from the digestive system pass into the urinary system. Be careful which direction you wipe when going to the bathroom. We cannot get rid of our microbiota. And thank goodness. Malted pathogens. We have already seen that it is very difficult for pathogenic microorganisms to travel to space. But it may be the case that an apparently innocuous microorganism appears where it should not. Or it may no longer be harmless due to spatial conditions. It is known that cosmic radiation, extreme temperature conditions or microgravity can influence the genes expressed by a microorganism. For example, in pathogenic bacteria, such as Salmonella typhimuriumit has been observed that in space They express a genetic pattern very different from the one they use on Earth. Besides, they become more virulent when they are off the planet. We do not know if some apparently innocuous microorganisms could also develop certain virulence due to this change of environment. An eye on the future. For something like this to happen today would be very strange. However, there are two scenarios in the future in which, perhaps, one of these situations could occur. On the one hand, microorganisms are deliberately introduced into the ships. For example, there could be microorganisms that transform lunar regolith into arable soil. It would be necessary to see if it is worth taking the risk of putting them on a spaceship. On the other hand, in the future space travel will be much more the order of the day. Then there may not be as many controls as there are now or, out of so many, some may fail. Just as globalization has led some pathogens to travel faster around the world, it would not be unusual for something similar to happen in space. We’re speculating, but it’s worth thinking … Read more

After a weekend of floods, deaths and evacuations, AEMET confirms that calm is coming for the New Year

by

Málaga, Granada, Murcia and the south of the Valencian Community have passed a complicated weekend with floods, deaths and displaced people. In fact, in some areas of the southeast the worst has not happened yet. And people are tired: «”I feel like selling everything and leaving town: the rains are increasingly torrential”, said a neighbor from Cartama (Málaga). However, we will forget again. We will start the year cold, yes. But also with a strong anticyclone, with fog and frost. There will be no rain except somewhere in the south/east and the Balearic Islands; something that with the night movements of New Year’s Eve, is good news. However, the models start to draw that with the New Year there can also be a change in pattern. A change of pattern? Starting Thursday, as explained by Duncan Wingenthe models contemplate “the rise of the Atlantic ridge towards Iceland and Greenland”: it is what experts call the “Atlantic ridge.” It is a tongue of high pressure at altitude that bulges over the Atlantic and extends towards high latitudes. It is a wall that diverts the current from the west. What it represents for Spain. It’s hard to saythe truth. The effect on the peninsula depends on where the dorsal ends up placed. Or, close the Atlantic corridor and we have a few days of stable, dry and cold weather on the surface. Or, it favors the entry of cold from the north with thermal drops, a winter sensation and snow. Or, finally, the storm corridor opens with the consequent intrusion of Atlantic fronts from the Ocean. That is, rain and a slightly milder climate. What should we expect? It is a great unknown: enormous. And taking into account that it is the key phenomenon to understand what is going to happen in the coming weeks in southern Europe, it is important. Therefore, we have to continue monitoring them closely. Euro-Atlantic regimes modulate temperatures, energy demands and meteorological alerts. The Atlantic Crest is a piece of that puzzle and there are many things that depend on it. It is still surprising because, well, for now we are only going to see a deep, wintery cry. Image | PolarWx In Xataka | La Niña is going to be meteorologically “less intense” than we expected. And that actually hides a problem.

In 1965 the Franco regime wanted to build a huge reservoir in Extremadura: instead it had 50 deaths and a cover-up

by

On October 22, 1965, a disastrous whistle began with a dismal sound in the working-class town of Saltos de Torrejón el Rubio, province of Cáceres, that at least some of the employees who at that time were working on the construction of the dams on the Tajo and Tiétar rivers have been fearing for days. About the nine twenty in the morning, while the children were hurrying through their breakfasts to leave for school, the hum of a siren began to resonate. The warning siren. The same one that screamed to warn of accidents. The problem is that that autumn morning Accident could very well have been written like that, with a capital letter. The discreet, humble and remote working-class town of the municipality of Torrejón el Rubioin the heart of Monfragüe, has just served as the setting that many still consider today as the worst work accident occurred in the history of Spain. A monumental work That is what the Franco dictatorship intended in the mid-1960s with the works in the channels of the Tiétar and Tagus rivers, to carry out an enormous reference work in Europe. It was the stage of developmentalism and only a few years earlier, in 1959, the regime had had to deal with the Ribadelago catastrophecaused by the failure of a dam that took away 144 residents of the Zamoran town. In Extremadura he wanted to make amends. In Xataka After the Civil War, Franco wanted to colonize emptied Spain. So 300 new towns were invented The project developed in Cáceres was certainly important. Neither more nor less than building two dams between the channels of the Tagus and Tiétar rivers, along with a huge canal between both infrastructures to transfer water and generate electricity. By October 1965 the works were already more than advanced. It is estimated that about 4,000 workers between 1959 and 1966, many of them residents of surrounding towns who found in the project a way to avoid emigration. In 2020, the anthropologist Manuel Trinidad he explained to elDiario.es that works of this type came to form a kind of guild, “the pantaneros”, who moved from one side of Extremadura to the other. The Negratín reservoir, in Granada. (Unsplash) To accommodate the workers who shaped the infrastructure for seven years, two towns were built, “the one upstairs”, designed for company officials and managers; and another for the laborers. Proof that it was an authentic town is that they had services such as a school, commissary, dining room, chapel, church and even a tavern, tobacco shop and a Civil Guard barracks. The Extremadura Newspaper precise that the person in charge of the construction was Agromán and the work was carried out for Hidroeléctrica Española, today Iberdrola. What happened? A combination of factors. One in which the meteorology is combined and everything indicates that negligence of those responsible for the project. The previous weeks had been especially rainy, which little by little caused the water level of the swamp to rise until it was barely 83 centimeters of the maximum authorized level. That the level and pressure rose did not mean, however, that the workers stopped working on the canal and the river bed. The inhabitants of the town were in fact preparing to witness quite a spectacle, like I would recognize years later one of the victims The Country: “Seeing the waterfalls of foaming water from the spillways for the first time.” It wasn’t like that. And what was expected to be a spectacle ended up being revealed as a branch. The pressure of the dammed liquid was such that a cofferdam ended up bursting. 14 tons that protected the pumping tunnel. Result: a violent torrent of water that ended up flooding the conduit, the underground plant and galleries. With everything that this implies. And the workers?  That is one of the keys to the tragedy. In the flooded canal between the Tagus and Tiétar dams, crews of workers continued to work and could do little to avoid the violence of the water. Not only that. The torrent expanded with such force that it ended up taking with it other employees who were toiling in the dry river bed. It is estimated that at that point alone there were some 400 people when the tragedy occurred. The force and speed of the water made it difficult for even them to get to safety. The event was so dramatic that it forced the town to be evacuated and rescue efforts to begin. “My father and many other workers were seeing him coming. He dreamed at night. He repeated many times: something is going to happen and it is going to be very bad. They want to try working with us,” remembers Flori Almendral in statements collected by The Jump. She is not the only one who retains memories of that episode. Paqui Martos tells for the same report how they managed to throw a rope to save a young man who was floating in a well. “It held on tightly with such bad luck that when it came out it broke.” His fate, he continues, was known shortly after: “15 days later we found him with the rope in his hands.” With the memory of what happened in Ribadelago still fresh, the Franco regime decided to silence the Monfragüe accident. The incident occurred on October 22 and on November 1 the NO-DO dedicated a brief space of 37 seconds to the news, remember The Daily Leapbehind a chronicle about a ball of the Barcelona bourgeoisie. Newspapers of the time, such as Above, Town either Alreadythey also passed on tiptoe about the tragedy. They officially recognized 54 fatalitiesbut there are those who raise the total number of deaths and missing people in the 1965 accident well above that figure, to more than a hundred. Specifying the exact amount is complicated. The workers remember that they moved 75 coffins and they were not enough to accommodate all the corpses. Some they even hold … Read more

The 17 deaths from the Eaton fire occurred in areas where the evacuation alert was delayed

by

The 17 deaths in the Eaton fire occurred in an area where evacuation orders took hours to arrive Los Angeles County officials are calling for an independent review of emergency notification systems, after some residents argued that Earlier warnings could have saved livesas reported by NBC News. Within a half hour of the fire starting on a hillside in Eaton Canyon on the afternoon of Jan. 7, the phones of thousands of east Altadena residents rang with a warning from Los Angeles County: “BE CAREFUL.” Within 40 minutes, a dire alert followed: “LEAVE NOW.” But western Altadena neighborhoods didn’t see the same urgency, as evacuation orders didn’t come until the next morning, more than nine hours after the Eaton Fire began. By then it was too late. The 17 people who died in the wind-fed fire were west of Lake Avenue, a major corridor that crosses north and south through Altadena. Among them were an 83-year-old retired Lockheed Martin project manager, a 95-year-old actress in Old Hollywood and a 67-year-old wheelchair-using amputee who died with his adult son, who had cerebral palsy. Fifteen of the deaths occurred in an area where the first evacuation order was not sent until 3:25 a.m. on January 8; the other two occurred in an area where the order came at 5:42 a.m., according to a review of alerts as well as data compiled by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office. They ask to review notification systems According to NBC News, the discrepancy between west and east Altadena is raising questions among local officials and residents about the timing of the emergency alerts, and whether earlier warnings could have saved lives. “There wasn’t much time to do anything, but our notification system should have been up and running long before they did it,” Altadena City Council member Connor Cipolla told the aforementioned media. “It’s obvious from the destruction. “It failed half of our city.”. On Tuesday, two Los Angeles County supervisors filed a motion calling for an independent review of emergency notification systems. As the county evaluates its response after any disaster, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said Wednesday she wants to accelerate an analysis of the wildfires that have killed more than two dozen people and destroyed more than 15,000 structures throughout the region. “I know on the west side, the older part of Altadena, it’s a lot more concentrated, there’s a lot of houses,” Barger told NBC Los Angeles. “We need to find out what happened, but I know the fire was spreading fast”. He warned that the additional notifications may not have saved lives, but said “the victims of this disaster deserve our transparency and accountability.” His motion, which will be voted on at the county supervisors’ meeting next Tuesday, followed a Los Angeles Times report about delayed evacuation notices in the Eaton fire. In a statement, the county’s Joint Coordinated Information Center said it could not immediately comment on factors that may have led to the deaths in the fires, and that A thorough review “will take months because it will require reviewing and validating call histories from the fire.”interview first responders on scene, interview incident commanders, and search and review our 911 records, among other essential steps, including obtaining feedback from all relevant sources. That work may also require an outside entity to ensure the integrity of the investigation.” Evacuation order arrived at dawn Electronic alerts are one method of warning residents, but the county added it also uses door knocks, loudspeaker patrols that canvas neighborhoods and media coordination. Jill Fogel said none of that happened in her part of west Altadena. She was huddled with her two young children and her father on Olive Avenue on Jan. 8 when she received a text message after 3 a.m. from a close friend north of Altadena saying there were flames in his backyard. Fogel, 43, said he checked the Watch Duty app, which provides real-time updates taken from emergency crews’ radio transmissions, but there were no warnings that his neighborhood might have to evacuate. He then looked outside his rental home and saw flames. A few minutes later, he received an alert ordering an evacuation. He told his landlord and then his family got into a car and drove away. As they left the neighborhood, joining a stream of cars, Fogel said he saw no fire vehicles or police cars and heard no sirens. Fogel added that he realized the fire was moving very quickly in the hours before the evacuation order was issued. But he believes authorities should have sent alerts much sooner. “I thought it was strange that the flames were so close and we had not received a warning”Fogel commented. “I thought they would have warned us much sooner.” Joe Ten Eyck, former head of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said it can be difficult to get the timing of fire evacuation alerts right: If you issue them too soon, you risk mass panic, congested roads and more danger, but if you issue them too late, you run the risk of people being trapped in burning neighborhoods. Those decisions often must be made in an instant, Ten Eyck said, based on rapidly evolving conditions. Many of the victims of the Eaton fire were elderly and probably couldn’t evacuate quickly, added Cipolla, the city councilman. “In everyone’s defense, it was a rapidly spreading fire and a very fluid situation,” he said. “But when you consider that 17 people lost their lives, many of them disabled and elderly, it seems as if something went wrong.” More than two weeks after it started, the Eaton fire is 91% contained, firefighters said Wednesday, while the cause remains under investigation. Investigators have focused on a high-voltage electrical tower in Eaton Canyon as the potential source, as strong Santa Ana winds approaching 100 mph drove the flames toward Altadena and Pasadena. Keep reading:– Relatives of victims who died in the California fires tell their stories.– Rayuela School intends … Read more

Two deaths reported in Houston caused by the historic winter storm

by

Houston authorities reported that Two deaths have been recorded that may have been caused by low temperatures caused by the historic winter storm hitting the southeastern United States. Ed Gonzalez, Harris County Sheriff, reported through his count of that on the morning of January 20 A man was found dead behind an apartment complex from 12355, Antoine Drive, northwest of the county. According to the sheriff, there were no signs that it was an intentional death, so we believe that the frost could have contributed to this death. Later, González reported that andThey found another deceased person in the parking lot of a restaurant at 307 South Fry Rd. It is another man, possibly a homeless person. It is believed that he could have died due to the low temperatures. A historic snowstorm has been sweeping across the Gulf Coast, moving from the east through the south, since early this week. More than 2,000 flights were canceled Tuesday across the United States and Autoports remained closed in Houston due to the storm, that produced debilitating travel conditions and power outages across the region, officials warned Near Beaumont, Texas, more than 5 inches of snow was recorded Tuesday, the most that city has seen in more than 100 years. One hypothermia-related death was reported in Georgia, according to James Stallings, director of the Georgia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. Keep reading:• Winter storm causes historic snowfall in Florida Panhandle• More than 2,000 flights canceled due to historic snowstorm that hits the southern US• Winter storms hit Northeast, delaying holiday weekend travel

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.