Serve and Protect

More than 100 officers from various jurisdictions involved in an extensive manhunt as a snowstorm threatens.

More than 40 protection details to guard potential targets.

Two pickup trucks that officers believed matched the description of the suspect's vehicle were fired upon by police officers. Two women delivering newspapers in one truck were injured, and one is hospitalized.

Within less than a week, a former LAPD officer has gone from being unheard-of to "arguably the most wanted man in America."

Thus far, Christopher Dorner has killed three and wounded two. But the fact that the wounded and one of the dead were police officers, another of the dead was the daughter of a police officer and his "manifesto" lists police officers as targets has sparked a massive police response that has even jeopardized civilians.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, witnesses to gang shootings are afraid to come forward, fearing that they'll be the next targets and not trusting the police department to protect them. This has lead to vicious circle, culminating in a clearance rate for murders that is less than half of what is was 20 years ago, even though the number of murders has also dropped to less than 50% of what it was at the time. But while the police union says that it's because there are fewer detectives, and Chicago Chief of Detectives Thomas Byrne complains about the unwillingness of citizens to come forward, in California, law enforcement is taking things into its own hands.

There is nothing wrong with this level of effort being put into tracking down a man who has taken the lives of others. But when police agencies put this level of effort into hunting for someone who hurts one of their own, citizens wonder why they're not entitled to the same. And this leads to communities coming to the conclusion that law enforcement doesn't care about them. Of course, it's doubtful that this intense response could be mounted after every shooting, even in cases where a suspect was being sought in connection with multiple homicides. But to be so selective in such a public case looks bad, and in situations like this, appearances are often reality.

Nanny! Make Him Stop!

How's this for a "Big Breakfast?"

• 12 rashers (or, as we call them in the U.S., "pieces") of bacon
• 12 sausages
• Six eggs
• Four black pudding slices 
• Four slices of bread and butter 
• Four slices of toast
• Four slices of fried bread
• Two hash browns 
• Eight-egg cheese and potato omelette
• Saute[d] potatoes
• Mushrooms
• Beans 
• Tomatoes

This is the Kidz Breakfast, termed such presumably because at nine pounds, it weighs as much as a small child. Check out the story on the BBC's website. The platter that Jester's Diner serves this thing on could be used as a sled. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the only person to ever finish one of these monster meals in the allotted 1 hour time frame was a competitive eater. Perhaps amazingly, the man only weighs 154 pounds. (His metabolism must set fire to every calorie with a hundred yards.)

And perhaps depressingly, Professor David Haslam, from the United Kingdom's National Obesity Forum went on the record with: "It should be banned." According to the good Professor, "eating the breakfast was 'dangerous' and 'profoundly wrong'." Dangerous I can get, even if it does come across as just a wee bit hyperbolic; as even Professor Haslam conceeds that it's "very unlikely" that even a person with a heart condition would simply drop dead if they somehow managed to shovel the whole meal into their body at a single sitting. And, after all, not even Jester's Diner actually recommends that anyone attempt to tackle this thing on their own.

At the heart of the Nanny State is the idea that there are people who can't be trusted not to make stupid choices, so those who know better have to take it upon themselves to limit the choices available to "sensible" ones. Wedded to this idea is that people are too dim to make poor choices unless actively presented with them. In theory, nothing stops any adventurous Briton with more culinary skill than sense from whipping one of these up in their own kitchen and going for the record. It's not like people haven't dreamed up crazier ways to get into Guinness. Sure, most people aren't going to go through the effort. But then again, most people are unlikely to go after the Kidz Breakfast without about a dozen of their closest friends for backup. (At about $23.55, this actually strikes me as a fairly cheap way to take the entire gang out to breakfast, and still have some left over for the dog. A filling breakfast for 10 at £1.50 each? Sounds like a steal.) But it's impossible to come up with a system that protects _everyone_ from themselves without also being over-protective. Okay, 6,000 calories in a single meal is too much for most people who aren't competitive eaters. But when you codify that into law, you're basically taking an arbitrary number and legislating around it. By why not any other number? This isn't to make a slippery slope argument. Rather, it's about pointing out the difficulty in establishing arbitrary limits. And, almost by definition, the rule and restrictions that a nanny state imposes are arbitrary. If hard cases make bad law, random ones are no better.

Grand Theft

Under most circumstances, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the argument that taxes represent theft by the government; prison should be likened to sanctioned kidnapping, et cetera. But in this case, the charge of theft should be made.

City workers in Tel Aviv found a parked car, erected a handicapped parking sign, re-painted the curb, painted a handicapped logo on the pavement and then had the car towed away. Then, the owner was slapped with a ticket. The only thing that saved her was the fact that the worker's actions were caught on camera from a nearby building.

The city of Tel Aviv's response when confronted with the video evidence? "This was indeed a serious error, and schlemielism that is unacceptable to the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality. We apologize for the distress and will examine our conduct for the future, so that these kinds of things won't happen again." That's not acceptable. This wasn't "bungling." It's hard to image that the workers somehow accidentally failed to notice that there was a legally parked car in the spot. Someone should be in jail for auto theft and fraud.

Thou Shalt...

Writer Alain de Botton, "in an attempt to promote overlooked virtues including resilience and humour," has created a "Manifesto for Atheists," that includes 10 virtues. Ten was perhaps an unfortunate choice, as the virtues are already being terms "the 10 Commandments for atheists." The ten items strike me as rather mundane and the sort of traits that one wants to raise children to have, as if de Botton had cribbed a page or two from Robert Fulghum's "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten."

1. Resilience.
2. Empathy.
3. Patience.
4. Sacrifice.
5. Politeness.
6. Humour.
7. Self-Awareness.
8. Forgiveness.
9. Hope.
10. Confidence.

Of course, like any reasonably intelligent set of virtues, it's kind of difficult to understand why these relate particularly to people who don't believe in deities, rather than just people in general. It seems that Jainism has a use for Humor and that Shinto wouldn't have anything against Resilience.

Perhaps, were it up to me, I would replace Hope with Honesty. Not only in the sense of being willing to speak the truth even when it is uncomfortable, but in expecting and encouraging others to be open and honest. We've allowed our society to become one in which lies are a social lubricant, to the degree that the truth is something that we find irritating. I would pick Hope to remove because Hope and Confidence strike me as being roughly the same, only differing in their "direction," as it were. Where Confidence strikes me as the belief that one can change the world (all of it, or just one's own corner) for the better, I tend to understand Hope as the belief that world will be changed for the better. And if I had chose only one, I find Confidence to be more useful.

In any event, it will be interesting to see how far this goes. Given the fact that there isn't a unified community of people who don't believe in something or other, I suspect that it won't garner any more than a small following. But that's okay. Virtue, fortunately, is the same, regardless of the pieces that one uses to build it.

Enter the Cavalry

"When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."
American Proverb

At the New Year's Eve party that I hosted recently, the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and gun control were among the topics of conversation. Support for greater limitations on guns was very much in evidence, and there was some questioning on why overall public support wasn't higher. I noted that if, sometime during the gathering, a person kicked down the door to my apartment with a knife and murderous intent, even an immediate call to 911 would not save any of our lives, unless the assailant, for whatever reason, simply didn't finish the job. (My apartment, like many in the area, has exactly one way in or out that doesn't require jumping out of a window or attempting to scale the side of the building, fire escapes having gone the way of the Dodo.) Contrary to the somewhat wishful thinking on the subject, the police are considered to have done their jobs just as well when they arrest a perpetrator after a multiple homicide as they are if they manage to interrupt him in the process of committing one. The police are not a force of public bodyguards; they don't have an obligation to prevent bad things from happening to us. In fact, not only do they NOT have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm by others or rescue them, they may prevent others from rescuing a person, especially in cases where they are expected to protect the would-be rescuer from harm.

I don't have any real weapons in my apartment because I'm basically wagering that the odds of a homicidal maniac barging into my apartment and attempting to murder me are so small that I don't have to worry about it ever happening in my lifetime. Note that I'm saying that it won't happen to SOMEONE. Just, given the circumstances of my life, that it won't happen to ME. And so I haven't bothered to take precautions

This isn't a bet that everyone is willing to make, and the comments that have gotten Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. into such hot water are little more than I'm being unwise in making it myself. And it's difficult to imagine that if Sheriff Clarke had been a Fire Chief instead, that he would have riled up so many people with a statement that one should have fire extinguishers on hand, because fire departments can't fly.

Now, there is something to be said for the idea that Clarke was being disingenuous in implying that the Sheriff's Department's rapid response capability had been eroded by layoffs. Or even that it would the the Sheriff's Department that would respond to most, or even a significant portion of, 911 calls in the first place. But the teapot tempest over his statements are mainly driven by a fear of guns in private hands, which has been heightened as of late - his assertion that 911 isn't as good a solution as being able to handle a situation oneself is nothing new, and we shouldn't treat it as a new public heresy.