Human Behavior

Yer Another Reason Why Ohio is Better Than California

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The law in Ohio gives protection to people who stop to help others in an emergency. The message is simple: average citizens can sometimes make a difference, and they shouldn’t be punished for doing their best.

I was under the impression that similar laws existed in many states, including California. But it would appear that any protection from legal consequences extends only to people rendering medical help.

Let the victims burn, let them drown, stand by while they are screaming for help. If they can’t get themselves out of trouble, then we just have to sit back and wait for the professionals to arrive. We are taking a huge chance if we do anything except bind up the wounds after the danger has passed.

Are you surprised to learn that I have no plans on moving to California?

Human Networks and Single Points of Failure

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Ronald Cass’s column about Bernard Madoff is insightful:

The sense of common heritage, of community, also makes it less seemly to ask hard questions. Pressing a fellow parishioner or club member for hard information is like demanding receipts from your aunt — it just doesn’t feel right. Hucksters know that, they play on it, and they count on our trust to make their confidence games work.
 
The level of affinity and of trust may be especially high among Jews. The Holocaust and generations of anti-Semitic laws and practices around the world made reliance on other Jews, and care for them, a survival instinct. As a result, Jews are often an easy target both for fund-raising appeals and fraud. But affinity plays a role in many groups, making members more trusting of appeals within the group.

“Affinity groups” (to use modern marketing-speak) may be particularly vulnerable to fraud because trust works both ways. Group members tend to be more trusting of other group members than of outsiders, and this caution toward outsiders protects the group. But it also means that group members tend to let down their guard against other group members. This is OK most of the time because the extra caution about outsiders keeps predators at bay, and business people who gain admittance to the group are more likely to be trustworthy than outsiders are. However, a sociopath who penetrates the group’s defenses may wreak havoc — the single-point-of-failure problem.

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Defining the Family Down

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Taranto links, with some irony, a NYTimes article emphasizing one aspect of census news, an increased percentage of black children live within a family:

Demographers said such a trend might be partly attributable to the growing proportion of immigrants in the nation’s black population. It may have been driven, too, by the values of an emerging black middle class, a trend that could be jeopardized by the current economic meltdown.
 
The Census Bureau attributed an indeterminate amount of the increase to revised definitions adopted in 2007, which identify as parents any man and woman living together, whether or not they are married or the child’s biological parents.

We suspect the third “indeterminate” reason is key and the news may not be all that great. But how do we know? Taranto has fun with this, but it has serious implications. It appears a combination of “political correctness” (ah, he says he loves the child; isn’t that the same as being a father – even better, perhaps?) and post modernism (words can mean whatever the hell we want them to, so can traditions, so can biology).

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Montana-Bahn

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There is a comment thread here Chicago Boyz responding to my post on Chicago drivers tearing down the left lane of I290. Someone asked if there was any experience about the experiment of unlimited speeds in Montana (they do have limits at night).

I… uh… found this photo on the internet of someone driving quickly in Montana. Rumor has it that there are many wide open spaces where you can see far ahead and the flat landscape means that there is no where for authorities to find you, should they care to do so.

There are speed limits at night and these are taken seriously; there is an amazing amount of wild life in parts of Montana and you do not want to hit them with your car at high speed.

Blagojevich, Obama and The Chicago Way

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I think most people familiar with Illinois politics expected that eventually some kind of Chicago landmine was going to go off under President-elect Barack Obama – it’s just that few people expected it might happen before the 20th of January.

Likewise, I think most informed watchers expected that Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL), perhaps the most unpopular pol in Illinois history, would follow his predecessor, disgraced ex-governor George Ryan (R-IL) to prison someday, few of us anticipated the depths of the grotesque quality of Blagojevich’s grasping venality that would have made Alderman Tom Keane blush. Ryan at least didn’t talk like a thug when he raked in his small-time bribes (have to wonder if Ryan’s chances for a presidential pardon just improved or gotten worse?).

The real political trouble for Obama can be read here in a post at “The Smoking Gun” regarding today’s indctment:

” ….Blagojevich, 51, and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested this morning on political corruption charges. While the affidavit does not specifically name the six prospective Senate candidates discussed by Blagojevic, Harris, and the governor’s aides, it appears that several are easily identified. “Senate Candidate 1” is Jarrett. “Senate Candidate 2” is Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. Emil Jones, an Illinois state legislator, is “Senate Candidate 5.” And “Senate Candidate 6” appears to be J.P. Pritzker, a wealthy Chicago businessman. Additionally, Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, is referred to in the affidavit as “President-elect Advisor.” (21 pages)”

Aside from Lisa Madigan, Attorney-General of Illinois and daughter of Springfield powerbroker Speaker Michael Madigan, this list is composed of Obama’s Best Friend, Political Godfather, a campaign Mega-Donor and his future White House Chief of Staff. Holy Cats!

I think this is what some folks used to quaintly refer to as “The Sleaze Factor“.