What a daft way to stop your spaniel eating the milkman
timesonline.co.uk
timesonline.co.uk
Intuitively we know this. Setting speed limits to a universal 5 MPH and rigidly enforcing the rule is close to what would be needed to reduce traffic fatalities to zero. But most people love their freedom and mobility. They look at the risk of a fatal accident with the rules as they are and say it's acceptable. And when someone beats the odds and has one, we don't generally blame the laws. We say it's a tragic accident, which is a way of saying an acceptable risk has been realized for someone.
We should think the same way about a great many things. Things like aircraft bombing or child abduction are horrific, but low risk. The horror makes us incorrectly disregard the fact that the risk is low--possibly low enough, even, to be acceptable.
The problem is compounded by the political and human need to do something. Even if the risk is acceptably low and cannot be meaningfully reduced without draconian measures, people feel the need to bring it down by one means or another. So they do things that don't help. For show. For comfort. Out of confusion.
A bit of mathematical clarity and a willingness to label things mere accidents would be helpful. Considering the many men willing to give their lives in wars throughout history to secure better lives for their descendants, it would be a shame if we threw it all away for fear of a few accidental deaths per year. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, the difficult thing about preserving freedom is that one must be willing to accept some low level of evil without doing anything legal to stop it.
People buy newspapers less to hear about the real news but to be worried/scared/concerned about stupid stuff they shouldn't care about.
I think it's societies fascination with that sort of thing that needs fixing.
The vast majority of us will live largely uneventful lives and will die of old age/cancer/heart attack/etc. We're not going to have our kids abducted, be the victim of terrorism, die from swine flu etc.
Maybe it's that "You're going to lead an uneventful life" bit that people just can't bear to face.
The worst one recently is pedophilia. I went to my sons play at school a while back, and we were told we must not video the play, and at the end we were told we could take pictures, but only of our own children, not of other peoples children, and not of groups of children together!
Of course everyone ignored the headteacher and instead used common sense - taking group photos etc, but it's incredibly disturbing to see such ridiculous policies come into place. What sort of message are we sending our kids?
(If you haven't seen the Brasseye pedophilia special you should definitely watch it. Classic).
Fear drives almost everything we do, really. Fear of starvation due to random events out of our control leads to the invention of farming. Fear of being homeless leads to a work ethic. Fear of being alone leads us to form bonds with others. Fear is probably the only universal motivator.
I don't know; I suspect people react very easily to "leadership" hints and cues about danger, and it's thus useful for politicians (of any stripe) to encourage fear.
There will always be some who do. G.K. Chesterton spoke of the "rational and deliberate preference which will always to the end trouble the peace of the world, the rational and deliberate preference for a short life and a merry one." (_Napoleon of Notting Hill_, chapter 8.)
Theodore Dalrymple found that preference in many of the English homeless; he was surprised to find that homeless wandering "is not without its compensations," and sounds like he was half-convinced to turn vagrant himself -- but read the article, http://www.city-journal.org/html/6_4_oh_to_be.html. Dalrymple also detects this preference for adventure over security in some of the English underclass... and, more worrisomely, Chesterton -- who knew of what he spoke -- detected it in the Nazis.
In other words: if we value our prosperity and idleness -- or even if we value simpler, more obvious ideals like "not torturing" and "not trying to exterminate the Jews" -- we should probably do something to make life a little less dull for those who prefer something else over dullness.
I don't support Ballard's methods, to say the least (read a book or two of his and you'll see why not); but perhaps permitting Americans to fight as mercenaries abroad, and relaxing our self-defense laws at home, might be a good first step? Or making the military a better-paying and less bureaucratic place?
I agree, its why Huxley had the idea of V.P.S Treatment in Brave New World.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
--Herman Goering, Nuremberg Diary, April 18, 1946
We understand there is a risk to driving a car, and accept it. To some extent we are deadened to it, forget about it (which is why I occasionally force myself to remember the risks) but we also intuitively understand the risk is low. You don't see an accident but every 6 months or a year, and most people are involved in them far less, yet we drive nearly every day.
Planes and abductions are different. We don't fly every day; we don't have an understanding of just how many flights happen, so we don't realize how low the odds actually are- we fixate on the downed plane, and in our minds we see 1 out of 1- 100% failure. Now, there are some exceptions like 9/11, where the risk is low but the cost is massive, possibly offsetting the low risk. That, on the bright side, can be approached differently (perhaps give the pilots weaponized doorways, or completely seal the door during flight. Institute a policy of 'go ahead and kill your hostage, we aren't going to crash this plane into the Empire State' [it is crucial to make the hostage NOT the pilot]. It's cruel, but if you crash the plane everyone and more are dead anyway, and without trained guards on-board there's not even a ghost of a chance you can fight the hostage free.)
Abductions are the same way; we are not aware how many children travel around on a daily basis and as such do not realize the relative size of the odds. This one also has an extra spice mixed in though- we are worried about somebody else, and we are not there. I find, at least for me, it's much easier to accept risk for myself esp. when I am involved in the situation, than it is to accept risk to someone else, ESP. when I am not involved in the situation.
Flying is also fairly unnatural for humans - it's at its heart rather dangerous, and it's thanks to the skill and training of the individuals involved that make it a safe way to travel.
Conversely, while we do get a fair amount of training to drive a vehicle, it's nowhere near the amount of checking and cross-checking that a pilot goes for. The nearest I do is "mirror-indicator-headcheck" when crossing lanes, and "if I have to think about whether it's dark enough to turn on my headlights, it's time to turn them on".
While the actual risk involved with flying may be low, that's because it's been reduced in practice a heck of a lot, but that's often not visible to the public.
Of course, this doesn't apply to the kidnapping situation... but maybe some kind of information campaign can do the trick there to.
The slogan that attracted most ire was not "Hilary for president" or "manlove rules OK" but "NASCAR sucks!"
And so a mob ran them out of one particular town. Apparently. Incidents on the show have been known to be staged from time to time, so I can't say with complete confidence whether this actually occurred.
You can't use such a simple-sounding argument to counter anything because it can be used just as well to justify the stupid stuff in the first place. What's needed is good old fashioned human judgement - but that's no longer allowed. We're slowly making it illegal to exercise your own discretion out of fear that someone else's discretion might be dangerous.
Smoking is disgusting every time it's done near you.
But someone with a dangerous pet is not very common.
Or perhaps they do. Frequency works when assessing statistical risk for a population. Statistics work for populations not for individual instances. The fact that my chances of being attacked by a dog are statistically low are little solace when faced with a frothing mad pitbull.
Ultimately individuals want to preserve themselves (and family/friends) not simply preserve a high proportion of the population.
Will passing the law alone make everyone obedient to it? No, of course not.
In fact, looking at the data, if you lump 'pitbulls and related breeds', rottweilers and german shepherds together you have 75% of the fatalities. A dog advocate would point out irregularities of lumping 'pitbulls and related...' but even allowing for that you have a pretty tiny slice of the overall dog breeds that can be called dangerous. As some breeds become more popular you might see them on the updated list - like rodesian ridgebacks which are sweet but massive enough to cause real damage.
I have an Irish terrier. He has some of the same temperament as a pit bull. That curious, relentless, stubbornness. But if he is about 17 kilos and if he ever lost it - he would not do much more than draw blood and give a nasty cut or two.
The biggest problem with pits/ rottweilers, etc. is that people often dont know what they are getting into. These dogs are generally smart, strong and dominant. It is an open question as to who is in charge. The best pit owners that I have seen know this and are firm, gentle and consistent. Then there are recently graduated fratboys who get a pitbull, call it Mojo or Samson and teach it how to do death locks on car tires...
Over the past 9 years in the 3 local dogruns, my dog and I have come into contact with numerous other dogs and have seen less than ten fights in that time frame (none that he was a participant in). The only human bites were from breaking up fights improperly (always grab the back legs and hold them high...). Dogs even when jammed together in tiny city dogruns (metro NYC) typically get along.
I realize as I write this that it is terribly anecdotal and i could go on about it as hanging out in the dogrun has made me an amateur cultural anthropologist.
http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Dog-Bites/dogbi...
Your dog could easily kill a smaller mammal, such as a human child. Indeed a "nasty cut or two" could kill an adult but is highly unlikely. Thing is if your dog threatens to harm me or my child and I crush its skull under my boot then I'll be arrested.
>Over the past 9 years in the 3 local dogruns, my dog and I have come into contact with numerous other dogs and have seen less than ten fights in that time frame
I find that interesting as nearly every time I'm out walking at a place where dog-walking is popular I witness dogs fighting. Probably a dozen times a year, I do try and avoid such places as I don't like walking in faeces or hearing "oh he's harmless" as my toddler is knocked over by an out of control dog.
>>I find that interesting as nearly every time I'm out walking at a place where dog-walking is popular I witness dogs fighting. Probably a dozen times a year, I do try and avoid such places as I don't like walking in faeces ...
I am in the city (<2km from midtown Manhattan) and the dog parks are fenced in areas where someone would not walk through faeces.
The fighting thing I will grant you as my point was anecdotal and yours was as well. There are very different attitudes regarding dogs and dog behaviour in different areas.
In the yuppie area that I live in it is pretty bad form to not clean up your dog's crap or to let your dog fight. So it doesnt tend to happen. But a short walk away to a more ghetto part of town and there are alot more fights and you are more likely to step in crap.
So point well taken.
I believe - however - that if dogs are socialized properly they will not tend to fight. In my life I have lived in suburbia and the city and a well raised city dog is a pretty fit and content beast. The suburban dog let out to a back yard where it stays all day barking at passing children, dogs and squirrels is often not.
My local dogrun is pretty heavily used by a population of about 500 dogs, there can be 15 - 20 dogs in there at a time. So it is surprising that there are not more fights. The city largely neglects the run so people informally replensh bags and scoops and fix the fence (server room zipties work great...)
>>...Thing is if your dog threatens to harm me or my child and I crush its skull under my boot then I'll be arrested.
Do not think so - if a dog is savaging another human it should be killed. That might depend upon the local laws but i think you have to kill a dog that is attacking someone. Not worth quibbling about but I was surprised by this comment.
>>... or hearing "oh he's harmless" as my toddler is knocked over by an out of control dog.
I hear you on this - I have 2 young boys (< 6yrs old) and it is troubling to see people with dogs they can barely control. The last nasty fight I say was some kind of mastiff which rally hurt another dog while the owner (who probably weighed less than the dog) shrieked nearby doing nothing.
A month or so ago, 2 dogs described as pitbulls in the paper were killed by the police as they seriously bit (shredded a leg in one case) 3 people in an apartment. (Though I found it even more disturbing to think that police were discharging a gun in an occupied apartment building but that is another issue.)
I find this indefensible - to keep dogs (or any animals) in a situation where you cannot control them. Even though it is pretty rare it is very disturbing.
How are people who chose to work at an office which permits smoking unwilling bystanders?
Unwilling may technically be the wrong word for that but it’s close enough.
Kinda ironic really.
"That government is best which governs least." -- Thomas Paine
It seems to me: Politicians with idle hands are often the architects of inanity of the sort complained about in the article. Once you "hire" them, they have to spend their time feeling like they are accomplishing Something Really Important.
Sigh.
It's not the same scale as an US senator, but you could compare it to a State governor from the smaller US states.
We used to joke about the chairman of the hospital, who was "the president's boss".
One issue I had with the article though, is the overuse of hyperbole. There is no indication of how much of it was fact, and how much was embellishments and exaggerations.
That is, in fact, a good summary of the public persona niche occupied by the author!
No, I didn't notice that it was by Jeremy Clarkson to start with, either.
For the benefit of the non-Brits, that's just sort of what he does. Seeing him on HN actually makes me feel a bit queasy.
I'm with you. I hate this style of straw man argument, for example:
"We see the same sort of overreaction to paedophilia. Just because one man in your town likes to watch schoolgirls playing netball"
Well obviously if paedophilia was limited to men like watching schoolgirls play netball, and not to people employed in positions of trust to deal with other people's children abusing them horrifically, then yes, that would be an over-reaction.
This kind of cartoon argument also makes it hard to have a real debate on the issue. For example we can legitimately discuss the "pants bomber" case - does the fact that one man caught attempting something increase the chances of it being done in the future, or are we like generals always fighting the last war?
As to the dog argument I am rather astonished at the hysteria surrounding this pronouncement, given the very high rates of micro-chipping in the UK. And there are a whole number of reasons why dogs should be microchipped for their own welfare.
In short the system we already had - no extraordinary measures except a populace who was aware of the danger and willing to act, was sufficient. And furthermore to the extent that we are safe from similar incidents in the future it is because we have a populace who is aware of the danger and is willing to act.
Actually, speaking personally, I'm mostly upset at the pants bomber for ruining a good joke. I used to reliably get a good laugh by saying how much worse it would be if the shoe bomber hid the explosives in his underwear. Now that joke doesn't work as well. :-(
Pedophilia is extremely rare. Getting every teacher to have lengthly criminal record checks done, having CCTV in schools, it's all theatre. But it's damaging. Anyone would think there were monsters lurking outside schools trying to get in to abduct children.
It just doesn't happen. Apart from to the 0.000001% unlucky people it does happen to. Which is the whole point.
As for dogs, it should be up to the owner if they want their dog chipped or not.
(number estimated from 879,000 substantiated child abuse cases in 2000, of which 10% where sexual in nature. Granted most of those are in a home environment not a school. If you want to just think about non-family member abductions (about as rare as things get), then you get down to something like one in 250,000 per child each year.)
Granted most of those are in a home environment not a school
I understood this to be the whole point: that the danger from the general public is vanishingly small. If you're saying that one in 250k is the stranger abduction rate and that the pedophilia is one tenth that, the PC thinks it's 4 times more common than you do.
ETA: What's worse, expending any effort on the 1-in-a-million issues, at best, distracts from actually imporving ones quality of life.
The fact that child abuse by educators is rare is no reason not to do something relatively simple (like a criminal check) to reduce its incidence. Lots of things are rare - liver cancer; plane crashes due to mechanical failure; Rackspace losing a whole data center, twice; I don't get the whole "pshaw, it's rare, no worries" attitude. I thought many of us here spend a lot of time eliminating rare events.
There are many professions which require background checks; for example accountants. What's the big deal?
On the radio the other day, a paediatric surgeon in the UK was lamenting the hassle involved in background checks. Ok, he operates on children, he gets a background check, so far so good. As one of only a few hundred dedicated paediatric surgeons, his skills are in demand, he is called as a consultant to another hospital. They don't accept any checks except their own so they do another. Which takes another month during which he is unable to help. Repeat for every hospital or every NHS zone, every year, for every applicable surgeon.
But who cares that treatment for children is being hindered by repetetive bureacracy, at least it's protecting children, right? Oh, wait...
In other words, having checks in place is a good thing, but only as far as it is proportionally useful to the costs of doing it. Not just doing anything and everything to anyone and everyone because it might help maybe.
I don't get the whole "pshaw, it's rare, no worries" attitude. I thought many of us here spend a lot of time eliminating rare events.
How much do you spend on rare event insurance? You read HN so it's a fair bet you earn living from computing, so you'll have particular insurance against losing or damaging your hands, yes?
Well, that's just a stupid implementation. You evidently should only be cleared once for any NHS facility and anyway, screening a paediatrician is not that useful because (a) they don't typically have uncontrolled access to children and (b) if you are a paedophile, putting yourself through med school just to have access to children is really beyond unlikely.
I think the fact that there is a media hysteria is blinding people to the actual issue - that's just like saying "PETA is nuts, let's all have battery-farmed chicken". Many people correctly assume that paedophilia is rare (it is). Also, not many people have unsupervised access to children (in fact only childcare workers, educators and priests typically do). So people put two and two together and say "a childcarer who is a paedophile is a very rare event". But that assumes that the chance of being a paedophile and the chance of having access to children are statistically independent events. They are not - as this well publicised case shows:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8284192.stm
Moreover, the "leverage" of the event is quite high. This is the same problem with plane crashes; they are rare, but when they happen, 300 people die.
You would be amazed how many professions in the UK require background checks. Did you know you need a background check to work at the Meteorological Office?
And many, many people on HN are working the US on immigrant visas. Frankly if you have been able to get a job without a background check or a drug test or a work permit, you're pretty lucky.
How much do you spend on rare event insurance? You read HN so it's a fair bet you earn living from computing, so you'll have particular insurance against losing or damaging your hands, yes?
Well losing my hands is just a sub-class of {unable to work for any reason} so no, I don't have specific insurance against that (though for example, more than one famous violinist or pianist does - because their lifetime earning loss is much greater). But when I was pregnant I got screened for cystic fibrosis. That's pretty damn rare. You'd be amazed if you thought about it, how many rare events you insure against. For example, the chance of your house burning down is actually very small. Yet most homeowners have fire insurance.
Speaking, at least, for myself, it's not hate so much as that I think you're mistaken. Your position appears not to have been fully thought out, based on your explanation or lack thereof.
The fact that child abuse by educators is rare is no reason
At the risk of seeming like I'm quibbling over semantics, of course it's a reason. It just may not be a reason you find adequate.
not to do something relatively simple (like a criminal check) to reduce its incidence.
Herein lie two fallacies.
The first is that criminal checks are simple. An earlier commentor points out some potential complexities. Saying they're relatively simple begs the question of simplicity. They're most certainly not simple relative to doing nothing beforehand.
The second, in my mind far more significant, fallacy is that doing "something" will reduce the incidence of the rare event. If the event is rare enough, we may not be able to reach any rational conclusions for lack of statistically significant sample size, let alone controlling for confounding factors.
Lots of things are rare - liver cancer; plane crashes due to mechanical failure; Rackspace losing a whole data center, twice; I don't get the whole "pshaw, it's rare, no worries" attitude.
I think you misinterpret as "no worries" the actual attitude of "I have better things to worry about."
Far more importantly, I my efforts (not just worries) are far better focused on something more frequent or at least on something where those efforts will clearly make a difference.
Otherwise, it's a shameful waste of time.
Do you actually have children? People who do generally would prefer they are not in the care of criminals (and we are not just talking about sex crimes - I woudn't particularly want a drug dealer or a murderer teaching kids either). It can be theater, but that doesn't mean it is without value to public welfare.
As to the microchipping, I don't understand how this is different than requiring a rabies vaccination or a dog licence. It's not a GPS tracker, for god's sake.
The incidence of crime here is so low that criminal checks, CCTV on schools etc is just stupid. If you live in a city, then sure, maybe you want more security.
How many people with criminal records that actually put our kids at risk, apply to be teachers? It's likely a negligable %. When they go for an interview, they'd likely be refused if there was a real risk.
It's like taking off your shoes at the airport. It doesn't stop anyone who wants to blow up a plane, and it just pisses travelers off and makes them fly less.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6DD223447015D017&...
So what if that's his opinion. He couldn't care less what we think and neither should we :-)
I think people like clarkson are really important to throw some of the idiocies of society into sharp relief.
People are complex and have many facets. You (or anyone) are not required to agree with everything a person says or does to also respect some of what they say and do. I'm not saying you are required to agree with what he says (or even to give a shit about what I say) - I'm just saying that it'd be nice if we (everyone) didn't always seem to be looking for the shortest path to writing off a person as useless.
This is another problem that is very similar to what Jeremy wrote about. I see this quite often, mostly in local news. Someone makes a statement that people don't like, and, regardless of their previous standing, suddenly everything they stand for has to be bad.
If I had one wish for the world, it would be that everyone becomes just a little more rational. We have to look at the big picture, get around all this maddening nonsense.
However, if you exclude that line... what is your complaint about the article?
I'll give you rich and male. He's definitely a pinky colour but I can let "white" slide. I'm pretty sure he's not a Christian.
Do you consider "rich, white, Protestant males" should not be allowed to air their opinions?