Crazy People on Trampoline with segway!

[glen_d]

People whose arguments consist solely of hyperbole usually think they've stumbled onto some form of entertainment, but just in case you're really confused, I'll address your comments.

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Originally Posted by TheRonster

. . . Actually, I was homing in on your "but look, he wasn't hurt" argument, which was problematic to begin with, and which moreover was buttressed only by someone's self-edited, self-submitted videotape . . .

. . . It made me wonder "what happened next?" Can you say, definitively?

My statements that the child wasn't hurt are based on the video: you are quite right. Apart from the representation of the person who made the video (and I can’t tell if you reject that) I cannot know what is missing from the video to a certainty that would satisfy you. A discussion about what is not on the video is not a debate, it's conjecture. It is impossible to defend a position – yours or mine – based on conjecture. The widely-applied standard in our society is that events are judged on what is known, not what is unknown.

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Originally Posted by TheRonster

YEs, it IS edited (not "may have been edited") into at least three chunks. Each segment ends abruptly right after something a bit shaky happens.

I never said it may have been edited, I said "TheRonster makes facetious comparisons to activities society has already labeled as dangerous and then suggests that the tape may have been edited to remove the depiction of an injury." You bring up the idea that an injury could be omitted with editing here:

Originally Posted by TheRonster

That kind of "logic" and a bit of video editing could be used to prove that Russian roulette is a safe thing to do with a revolver

We can all see the tape was edited, and your suggestion that I somehow represented otherwise is sophomoric.

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Originally Posted by TheRonster

You're pinning your entire defense on the "fact" that no person or property was harmed. If you want logic, that very same defense is 100% perfect almost every time for Russian Roulette. Why don't you stick with that defense for Russian Roulette and slingshot Jarts?

You answer your own question here. You note that the “very same defense is 100% perfect almost every time.” Even if the activity doesn’t kill someone, as you say “almost every time,” the activity has been show to kill sometimes. Society has correctly judged that trading a life, even at a low frequency, for the excitement of Russian Roulette or throwing lawn darts in the air is not appropriate. Society came to this conclusion over many examples of the questioned behavior. The case of a Segway on a trampoline is one case, one time, with no evidence of any injury. No one has even attempted to offer a comparative analysis of the danger involved on a trampoline against other accepted and dangerous activities (riding double, riding backwards, and so on). Everyone immediately leaps to the assumption that the activity is unacceptably dangerous. So far, it’s less dangerous than the cumulative experience of Little League.

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Originally Posted by TheRonster

You're the one trying to pitch this into an emotional civil rights case, raising the specter that if we don't look the other way when the Russian Roulette fad catches on, someday a busybody gubmint bureaucracy will end up deciding what color crayons my little girl can use.

I’m not asking you to look the other way. I said, “Intrusion only after reckless and consistent disregard for the child's welfare, difficult to prove without result, is the standard most people would choose for themselves.” You’ll be hard pressed to find someone who would argue that allowing a child to play Russian Roulette doesn’t constitute reckless disregard for the child’s welfare – I certainly think it does. Sometimes intrusion is necessary: I would act to protect a child truly in danger just like most everyone else. But I think the threshold for interfering with a parent ought to be higher than no demonstrated injury after one ride on a Segway on a trampoline.

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Originally Posted by TheRonster

You keep saying nobody has a right to interfere with the father who set that up and videotaped it. So far as I can remember, none of us did interfere. None of us said we had a right to interfere. I don't recall giving Segway Tramp Dad any advice on any other aspect of his child-raising philosophies.

Let me help you remember:

Originally Posted by TheRonster

Classic depiction of "someone with more money than brains ...."

That’s not you saying whether or not you’d let your kids do something like the video, that’s your judgment of Wayne. It sounds like you’re saying “Wayne’s a bad man” to me.

If Wayne is really a bad father, recklessly exposing his child to danger, how can you damn Wayne and ignore the child’s plight? A rational person cannot. If you condemn Wayne, you advocate to help the child – that’s your interference. If you don’t want to interfere, delegate the judgment about safety to Wayne except in cases of extremes, like Russian Roulette.

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Originally Posted by TheRonster

It looks to me like a dumb, risky thing to do with almost no payoff in adrenalin.

That sounds like you saying you wouldn’t operate your Segway on a trampoline. Maybe you do get it.

Glen

[sholloway]

I still think there is a HUGE difference between "interfering" with a parent and strongly disagreeing with a parent. No one has said we should find Wayne and try an interfere with the raising of his children. That doesn't mean we can't say how we believe the video shows dangerous activities. It sounds like Wayne wouldn't let his kids do this again at least without more safety precautions and Wayne was there and certainly knows if there was an injury or not. When that video was put on the internet it was basically offered up for feedback, that's what we've given, feedback. Again, you're wanting to have a scientific, if not philosophical debate regarding exactly what happened in the video. We're debating activities that might be dangerous and what "could have" happened or "might happen" in the future. We all KNOW we don't KNOW what will happen in the future, that doesn't make a discussion of it useless. I think we debating apples and oranges.

[sholloway]

Wayne, thanx again for posting. Most people would have read our comments and just logged on with explicatives and insults and left it at that. Other than driving like an idiot when I was 16 (which my parents didn't know about) I don't think I've been involved in many risky activities. I did repo a car once that I was owner financing and that was pretty scary. I guess being raised the way I was and you having the childhood you had we just have very different perspectives on risk. I know for a fact these things are too dangerous for kids and you know for a fact that they aren't. Obviously neither are fact but it's what we'll believe and no one will probably ever change our minds. So, I'm very sorry to hear about any possible medical problems you may have in the future but I hope you enjoy your years with your kids and I'm sure I will with mine. Good luck Wayne.

[glen_d]

Originally Posted by sholloway

If you're not a parent, no matter how many times you hear someone say "I never knew I could love someone this much", you'll never know how much that is.

Is that right? So I love my wife less than you love your child? You're a better judge of the safety of others because you're a parent? I don't think so.

Unlike many people, I get paid for my good judgment. Maybe I love my job less than you love your child, but that doesn't stop me from saving people's lives. About a month ago, I judged the pilot of a Learjet to be confused and in trouble. I reached out and had him call me. He was disoriented on a complicated pilot-nav approach in the middle of the night into a runway surrounded by the Pacific Ocean on three sides. He had no idea where he was except that he was in trouble. I helped him set up for another approach, but he flubbed that too. Finally, I got him calmed down and slowed down enough to successfully complete a third approach. He's lucky to be alive. His family is lucky to still have him around. So is the family of the nurse in the back. I only hope the patient on this medivac flight fared as well.

The pilot called the facility and thanked us for keeping him alive. My childless judgment has saved a dozen airplanes full of people over the years. Plenty of my coworkers - childless and not - have done the same thing. So don't give me your malarkey about parents being endowed with some special capability for judgment.

Glen

[sombody]

Alot of parents still smoke in the car with the windows rolled up-
and what about Croc hunter Steve Irwin ?

Where is Dr Phil ?

rick

[sholloway]

Thank you for saving that pilot and that nurse and their families. Cudos to you. Your story is irrelevant and no matter how many times you hear someone say "I never knew I could love someone this much" you'll never understand until you have a kid. And if there were some way to measure "love" I would gladly say I do love my kids more than you love your wife. And until you have a kid, you're not qualified to compare the parent child relationship to the husband wife relationship, no matter how much logic, how much you get paid to have judgement, no matter how well your sixth sense works on when pilots are in trouble. It's wild because you're being so logical but logically you should know that if you've only experienced one of those relationships then you wouldn't be able to compare the two of them.

[KSagal]

It seems that no one in that plane got hurt, so according to your original logic, there was no danger.

I never offered comparitive values as to how much this man loves his children. I also did not know that your love for your wife allows her to jump from the stairs without looking...

What I said is that a dad has responsibilities. He has the responsibility to look out for his children in a manner that he would not look out for an adult. Wayne aggreed that the safety measures I said were lacking were indeed lacking, and that if he did it again, he would add helmets and more safety...

I don't think I complained about the seg on the trampoline as you claim that everyone did. I complained about the father not insisting on the safety measures that I felt were required.

I have never been an air traffic controller, but I am a pilot, a jumpmaster and an instructor of skydivers and jumpmasters. I can have the intellectual capacity to understand your story. Intellectual capacity is not enough to understand the bond between child and parent. It is a completely different relationship between adults. I have a wife and children. I have been where you are, you have not been where I am.

I would argue that stupid people can be good parents. It is not about judgement alone. I can imagine that we all know very intellegent, very bad parents.

Waynes first post about acrobatics with the kids, and rides in the racing boat scared me. I said so. His next posts backed off a bit. As an air traffic professional, you likely know that aerobatics require the pilot to have a parachute, and there are no paracutes for kids. Thankfully, Wayne has taken a far less aggressive and defensive role in his posts (and that posture may have seemed quite justified to him) and has given us much more and far better mittigated information...

I still do not agree with some of his choices, but have voiced all along that I would not interfere lightly, and do indeed set a very high threshold to interferance...

So I believe we have all gone almost full circle. No one wants to interfere with this parent, and he agrees that some safety gear was lacking and he would not do that video exactly the same way next time. We are all a lot closer than further. Let's call it a win-win.

[cruiter]

Folks, IMO, the only reason we're paying this much attention to this topic is The're not shipping the i2's yet Does anyone think the're getting the straight skinny on why they aren't shipping on schedule. It's personal with me, I just want to glide and quit being a pest to my dealer Scott of Segway of Alpharetta.

[austin@SOH]

I just got word that they should be shipping units by the end of september....

[cruiter]

That's really late, I wish they would communicate with the dealers better as to their problems. Not communicating to the dealers or customers creates doubts that linger.
Jim

Originally Posted by austin@SOH

I just got word that they should be shipping units by the end of september....