Oh, Those Marines!

Take a good, hard look at these Marine helicopters. See anything that inclines you to hysterical laughter?

Now that’s my idea of great camouflage!

Accident or Crime?

Consider these events:

Joe is a young man, a college student, and by all accounts hard-working, honest, and just plain pleasant to be around. His several girlfriends adore him, and his fellow students tend to think Joe will be one of the class’s success stories.

Joe is a fun-loving guy, and this past July 4th he had a party at his house in a rural area just outside the town of Jamul. Right after he and his guests ate their all-American barbeque dinner, they went out on the patio and sang a rousing and heart-felt (though not very competent) rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner”. Joe punctuated each stanza by firing his rifle into the air. Then Joe and his guests went back inside to watch a soccer game on TV.

A half mile from Joe’s house, Sam and Sophie live in a little bungalow with their two kids. Sophie was outside watering the patio plants, when a rifle bullet fell from the sky, penetrating her skull and killing her (and her unborn baby girl) instantly.

Police traced the bullet to Joe’s rifle.

The story above is fiction, but I wrote it as background for this question: how should Joe’s actions be thought of and treated — as an accident or as a crime? My fictional story deliberately avoided anything to do with cars, because somehow we seem to think about deaths and injuries involving cars differently than just about anything else.

To me, this is a no-brainer: Joe knew darned well that firing a gun is dangerous, and that injury or damage could result. But he made the choice to fire his gun anyway, despite knowing the danger of doing so — the epitome of reckless behavior. My own take would be that Joe should be held fully accountable for his criminal action that resulted in Sophie’s death — this was no accident.

Judging from the comments to my posts about the very similar issues that arise in the case of Jonny Dallo and Jodi Burnett (see here, here, here, and here), some of my readers hold a very different view. They would say that Joe is a good kid, that it makes no sense in such a tragic situation to ruin two lives, that Joe didn’t intend to kill Sophie — therefore Joe’s punishment should be much lighter than what I would advocate, possibly with no jail time at all.

But I wonder if these apologists for Jonny Dallo would actually apply the same logic to Joe’s actions that led to Sophie’s death. In particular, I wonder if their reactions to Jonny’s actions leading to Jodi’s death are colored by the fact that they know Jonny — in other words, that they are reacting emotionally, mainly in sympathy with Jonny, and their statements reflect that, rather than a general belief that reckless behavior shouldn’t be severely punished.

Here’s a thought experiment for the commenters who believe Jonny should not be severely punished: suppose you were Sam (Sophie’s husband), or Sam’s neighbor Sally. How would you feel about the death of Sophie and her baby? Would you think about it as an accident, or as a crime? Would you think it proper to punish Joe severely? Or would you say there’s no point to such punishment, and Joe should be punished lightly, or not at all?

I hope it’s true that even the Jonny Dallo apologists would agree that Joe should be held criminally accountable — this would restore some of my faith in my fellow citizens. It’s totally understandable that Jonny’s friends and family would want to stand up for him, and that they’d find it almost impossible to accept that severe punishment was what he deserved. But nobody knows my fictional Joe, Sam, or Sophie … so anyone thinking about this story should be able to do so without the bias of a pre-existing relationship.

So how about it, readers? Anyone willing to take the thought experiment, and comment on it?

Why We Fight

Tip o’the hat to reader Sid F., who says:

[This] is a way for people to send comments of support to the people of India in their time of need.

Why is this important?

It is important because this is why all the people who served and are serving in Iraq and Afghanstan believe so strongly in what they are doing there.

They fight against terror over there so we don’t have happen here what happened in India today.

It’s why they Fight. It is why we should fight for them and support them in every possible way.

Thank you.

Can’t think of a darned thing to add to that!

Real Education Reform

I read a commentary piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning with great interest — it describes an effort (in New Jersey, of all places!) to transfer control of education funding from derelict school districts to the parents. The money quote:

Remedial Education ($WSJ)

The remedy these parents seek is fundamentally different from the one established by more than three decades of litigation across the country. Courts in states like New York, Texas and California have ordered massive increases in school funding to fulfill state constitutional mandates for educational “equity” or “adequacy,” all on the belief that more money will boost school quality and student performance. The funds have produced new programs and bureaucracies, but too often they fail to trickle down to the students by way of improved educational quality.

In any area other than education such a remedy would be considered bizarre. Suppose you purchased a car whose warranty promised “thorough and efficient” transportation, and it turned out to be a lemon. If you sued to enforce the warranty, would a court order a multibillion dollar payment to the auto maker in the hope that someday it would produce a better product? Of course not: It would order the company to give your money back so you could buy a different car.

The author of the piece (Clint Bollick, recipient of a 2006 Bradley Prize, president of the Alliance for School Choice) is supportive of the plaintiffs (the parents). He doesn’t seem to have a read on the proabability of the suit’s success. Knowing the liberality of the New Jersey courts and the influence of public employee unions in general, I’d guess the chances aren’t good. But I sure like the sound of it — and wouldn’t be just gorgeous irony if the kick in the butt that our primary education system so badly needs came from New Jersey?

You might wonder just how badly the school districts named in the suit are actually doing. Here’s the scoop:

One of the defendant school districts in the new suit, Englewood City, spends $19,194 per student, well over twice the national average. But at Dismus Middle School, over two-thirds of the students do not have basic proficiency in math and fewer than half are proficient in language arts literacy. Newark, a recipient of massive Abbott funding, spends $16,351 per student and pays its teachers an average salary of $76,213. Yet in 24 of its schools, fewer than half the students demonstrate basic proficiency in math or language arts. At William H. Brown Academy and at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School, fewer than one of every 10 students demonstrates basic math proficiency. It’s time to try something else for these children.

Amen to that.

But … anticipating the court will find against the plaintiffs, and uphold the status quo (though I’d certainly be pleased if it went the other way) … I wonder what theory the court would use? Perhaps they’ll find a new “right” in the Constitution — the right for public employees to waste our hard-earned dollars and to fail utterly in their duty to educate our kids, forever and without consequence.

Let’s hope that Newark’s Chancery Court can find the wisdom — and the courage — to buck the forces-that-be in New Jersey. What a refreshing change it would be for the citizens of that state (those who haven’t already fled to more hospitable territory, such as California, Siberia or Iran) to find themselves admired for their bold reform, instead of scorned for their corrupt and moronic local government…

Estonian Fires

I associate forest fires primarily with dry, hot conditions — the conditions we have in Southern California every year, and also in much of the rest of the Western U.S. Of course we also have forest fires in damper places, such as Maine and Minnesota. But somehow Estonia has always seemed to me like it should be relatively immune to fires, with its extensive swamps and utter lack of anything even remotely resembling a desert. So it was with some surprise that I read this story:

TALLINN - With temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius and no rain for quite a while, firefighters have been frantically trying to put out 22 forest fires, the largest of which are burning through Kurtna and Kuusalu.

About 180 hectares of woods are ablaze in Kurtna, located in the northeastern Ida-Virumaa region. In Kuusalu, some 30 kilometers east of Tallinn, 20 hectares of forest are burning, the Rescue Board duty officer told the Baltic News Service.

Soon after midday on July 11, rescuers were informed about a fire in the western Laane County where two hectares of fields were in flames.

Fire fighting also continues on Saaremaa Island and in Jarva County, where forests have been burning for several days now.

For the Celsius-challenged out there, 30C is about 86F — not quite as hot as we are, but certainly not cool. And a quick look at the relative humidity shows that it’s 50% right now, so (compare to us) its pretty muggy there. But 22 forest fires! One hectare is about two and a half acres, so these are (by our standards) very small forest fires. No area of Estonia is truly remote, though there are plenty of areas without established roads. I know all of the areas with fires quite well; the fires in Kurtna and Saaremaa particularly surprise me, as they’re relatively close to “civilization”. Fires that small and that close to civilization here would be extinguished with great speed. I can only guess why that’s not true in Estonia: that they don’t have the equipment and organization that we do, because they don’t have forest fires that often. But I’m just guessing…