“Locking the barn door after the horse is gone”

The Death of Raymond Zack: No Heroes, Only Bystanders

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments

50-year-old Raymond Zack waded into the surf on an Alameda, California beach and stood calmly in the 54-degree water, apparently waiting to die. His suicide took nearly an hour, but eventually he drowned, with no rescue attempts from any of the 75 San Franciscans who gathered on the shore to watch the entire tragedy.

Why didn’t anyone try to rescue the man?

Apparently it was because nobody was paid to do it. You see, stopping Zack from killing himself wasn’t anyone’s job.

The media’s focus in reporting yet another disturbing incident with echoes of the murder of Kitty Genovese has been exclusively on the inert Alameda police and firemen who witnessed Zack’s suicide. “Fire crews and police could only watch,” wrote the Associate Press.

What does the AP mean, “they could only watch”?  Were they shackled? Held at gunpoint? Were all of them unable to swim? They didn’t have to watch and do nothing, they chose to watch and do nothing, just like every one of the bystanders who weren’t police or firemen chose to be passive and apathetic when saving a life required action and risk. Continue reading →

Tucson Aftermath: Don’t Let The Barn Door Close On Freedom, Please

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In the wake of Jared Loughner’s attack, the “barn door fllacy” is in full operation as intensely, and foolishly as I’ve ever seen it. Everyone from social reformers to yellow-bellied Congress members are proposing changes and suggesting “dialogues” aimed at stopping Jared Loughner’s completely unpredictable conduct, which, they seem to forget, has already occurred. Almost always, when everyone rushes to lock the metaphorical barn door after the horse is gone, they make the barn and everything around it uglier, less useful, more expensive, and less respectful of basic human dignity and freedom: witness the TSA’s outrageous new pat-down procedures, designed to stop 2009’s exploding underpants terrorist, who was unsuccessful. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: What Do the Gulf Oil Spill, Pearl Harbor, Bernie Madoff, 9-11,Tyler Colvin’s Chest Wound Have in Common?

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Answer: They all are the inevitable consequences of the human conduct known (on “Ethics Alarms,” at least) as the “Barn Door Fallacy”—the irresponsible and unethical tendency to allow a dangerous situation to persist until it actually causes catastrophic damage, thus giving the decision-makers sufficient support to spend the money or cause the systemic disruption necessary to address the problem, too late, of course, to save the victims of the catastrophe. They lock the barn door, but after the horse is gone, and perhaps has trampled someone to death while leaving.

Who is Tyler Colvin? He is a major league baseball player in the employ of the Chicago Cubs. His season, and almost his life, ended yesterday: Continue reading →

Broken Bats, Barn Doors, and Murder

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Craig Calcaterra, a former lawyer who now does baseball blogging over at the NBC sports site, has once again called for baseball stadiums to include protective netting along the stands from home plate to first and third base. This time the impetus is a frightening incident in Milwaukee at a Brewers game, in which a broken bat handle went flying into the stands and hit a child. These types of incidents have been happening with greater frequency in recent years, although these is some disagreement about why. Some say it is the more brittle maple bats, others that it is the whip-thin handles of the bats now in vogue, and still others blame the new glut of baseball parks seating fans closer to the field. Continue reading →