I read that in the US there's such a huge global panic about children
being kidnapped, that at some places it even borders the illegal to let
children *walk* on the street alone (eg. to go to school or hobbies).
Eg. some woman got fined because she let her kid do that.

  Instead, children are always driven by car to and from wherever they
need to go.

  Now, this seems to be an utter failure of perspective: Approximately
100 children are kidnapped each year in the United States. However,
over 10000 children die in car accidents each year in the United States.
That's a one hundred-fold difference. Nevertheless, they still consider
driving them by car safer than letting them walk.

  Thus the "cure" to the problem of 100 children being kidnapped each
year is to have ten thousand of them die in car accidents.

  Sense or proportion, anyone?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   Sense or proportion, anyone?

Aren't you talking about America?

Have you *seen* their portion sizes? (Or their waistlines... sheesh.)

Still, craziness is not limited to the US. How many people actually got 
killed by bird flu? Swine flu? Mad cow disease? Terrorist attacks? Car 
accidents? Spot the odd one out... [And I don't just mean the one that's 
actually preventable.]

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp schrieb:
>   Now, this seems to be an utter failure of perspective: Approximately
> 100 children are kidnapped each year in the United States. However,
> over 10000 children die in car accidents each year in the United States.
> That's a one hundred-fold difference. Nevertheless, they still consider
> driving them by car safer than letting them walk.

Well, how many of those 10000 children were /in/ mom's SUV at the time 
of the accident, and how many were /in front/ of some stranger's pick-up 
truck? Or some other mom's SUV, for that matter...

(Are you sure it's only 10000? That sounds pretty amazingly low for 
about half a continent.)

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Warp wrote:
> 100 children are kidnapped each year in the United States. 

And something like 95% of those are kidnapped by their own relatives. The 
parents will get divorced, mom gets the kid, dad kidnaps his own kid, etc.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:4ab1277c@news.povray.org...
>  I read that in the US there's such a huge global panic about children
> being kidnapped, that at some places it even borders the illegal to let
> children *walk* on the street alone (eg. to go to school or hobbies).
> Eg. some woman got fined because she let her kid do that.
>
>  Instead, children are always driven by car to and from wherever they
> need to go.
>
>  Now, this seems to be an utter failure of perspective: Approximately
> 100 children are kidnapped each year in the United States. However,
> over 10000 children die in car accidents each year in the United States.
> That's a one hundred-fold difference. Nevertheless, they still consider
> driving them by car safer than letting them walk.
>
>  Thus the "cure" to the problem of 100 children being kidnapped each
> year is to have ten thousand of them die in car accidents.
>
>  Sense or proportion, anyone?

It's a very good point.  I grew up in a house in the middle of the woods.  I 
had neighbors that were no closer than about 1/4 mile away.  I had an older 
brother, but certainly from the time he was 12, we were both home alone 
after school (I was 8/9).  The worst thing that ever happened is that my 
brother got fat, because he would eat too many snacks while Mom and Dad 
weren't around.

But anyway, this question came up again for my wife and me, in regards to 
our daughter, who was 10 at the time.  We started leaving her at home alone 
for the couple hours after school.  Neither of us was actually worried about 
her being kidnapped, but both of us were worried about "What will people 
think?"  Even so, we'd normally call just to make sure she was there, and 
that she hadn't, say, slipped in the bathtub or something.  If that 
happened, it's possible that an overly zealous prosecutor could put us on 
trial for child-neglect.  Michigan (where I live) has no law setting a 
certain age for children to stay home alone, so it's really left up to 
society in general, and at this rate, by 2100, society will believe that 21 
years old is the youngest you should be.

In reality, I think most people are like us.  We're not so much afraid of 
kidnappers, as much as we are afraid of how we might be viewed by our 
neighbors/community, not to mention Social Services (the government child 
welfare watchdog).  Once THEY come to get your kids, it can be months, or 
even years, before you get them back.

If I could talk to my grampa now, he'd probably tell me about how he had to 
get home from school, hop on the tractor and plow the field until sunset, 
when he was 8 years old...  ;-)

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Still, craziness is not limited to the US. How many people actually got 
> killed by bird flu? Swine flu?

  I don't think that comparison is valid. There is precedent for dangerous
influenza pandemics killing staggering amounts of people. For example the
1918 flu pandemic ("Spanish flu") killed over 50 million people. The Hong
Kong flu killed about one million people in 1969. The Asian flu killed
about 2 million people in 1958.

  Thus it's not "crazy" to be scared of a flu pandemic.

> Terrorist attacks?

  I remember one year when terrorist attacks alone killed many thousands
of people.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   Thus it's not "crazy" to be scared of a flu pandemic.

  However, do you know what *is* crazy? Thousands of pigs being slaughtered
and international import bans on pork. Why? For the sole reason that it's
called "swine flu". No other reason. It doesn't matter how much the WHO and
everybody is telling that the name in no way implies that pigs spread the
disease. If it was called something else, then the poor animals would not
get slaughtered and people would be none the wiser.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_outbreak_actions_concerning_pigs

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:4ab1277c@news.povray.org...
>
>  Instead, children are always driven by car to and from wherever they
> need to go.
>
Just as another way of looking at this issue, the "car culture" is huge in 
the US.  In most places in the world, bicycles are all over the place. 
People driving cars must be more patient in those countries.  As an avid 
"cyclist" in the US, I can honestly say that not only to most people think 
"You should get the f*** off the road!" but roads are becoming less and less 
bicycle friendly.  At the same time, our society is trying to build bike 
paths, all over the place.  70 years ago people would have openly wondered 
why we needed bicycle trails, as we already had roads, and they work just 
fine for bicycles.

Something which irritates me (short rant).  We have a major divided hi-way 
near where I live.  I used to ride my bike across it.  Recently, the 
government decided to install a "Michigan Left Turn" 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_left) and to also remove the center 
section which allowed traffic to proceed straight across the highway, so now 
you have to make a right-turn, then a left-turn (U-turn) in order to go 
straight across.  That's fine.  Someone was killed there a couple years ago, 
and there are a lot of accidents.  Maybe that will help.  Fine.  I can deal 
with that.  But what if I want to ride my bike across the highway?  Well, 
now I have to ride my bike 1/2 mile down a busy major hi-way.  That's 
something I try to avoid at all costs.  The alternative is to cross two 
lanes of traffic, stop in the fast lane, walk my bike through the new 
ditch,that used to be the road crossing, get back on my bike, cross 2 more 
lanes of traffic, then continue on.  They did not even consider the 
possibility of people on bicycles or even pedestrians.  It apparently never 
even crossed their minds that anyone not in a car would be on a road.

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On 09/16/09 12:59, Warp wrote:
>    I read that in the US there's such a huge global panic about children
> being kidnapped, that at some places it even borders the illegal to let
> children *walk* on the street alone (eg. to go to school or hobbies).
> Eg. some woman got fined because she let her kid do that.
>
>    Instead, children are always driven by car to and from wherever they
> need to go.

	I think it's mostly media exaggeration. It's fairly routine for 
children to walk/take the bus, and raises few eyebrows generally.

	As for the number, 100 is too few. In my small town of about 100,000, 
we have a bunch of cases each year. According to:

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2810#1

it's more like 250,000. The number that are reported missing is over 
750,000.

	Jeremy did raise a good point about Child Services. They can get really 
nasty, and while it's probably not the norm, ridiculous behavior on 
their part is quite well known.

-- 
Kotter: "Have you ever considered becoming a vet?"
Epstein: "Uh...Uh no. My brother Sanchez was in the army. Didn't like it 
a bit."

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On 09/16/09 14:44, Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> 100 children are kidnapped each year in the United States.
>
> And something like 95% of those are kidnapped by their own relatives.
> The parents will get divorced, mom gets the kid, dad kidnaps his own
> kid, etc.

	That doesn't negate a fear of letting them go out ;-)

	According to the link I provided, it's more like 80%. According to 
another paper I found, it was 78% for 1999.

-- 
Kotter: "Have you ever considered becoming a vet?"
Epstein: "Uh...Uh no. My brother Sanchez was in the army. Didn't like it 
a bit."

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