7 ms·

What a daft way to stop your spaniel eating the milkman

114 points by kvs 17y ago

boredguy8 17y ago
Interestingly similar to DRM, where we have to deal with massive limitations on legitimate use while having very little stopping effect on illegal use.
- NathanKP 17y ago
  Indeed. However, I would suspect that considerably more than 5% of people would download a torrent rather than buying.
vault_ 17y ago
A good reminder that people overreacting is often just as much of a problem as whatever they're trying to solve. One issue I had with the article though, is the overuse of hyperbole. There is no indication of how much of it was fact, and how much was embellishments and exaggerations.
- Luc 17y ago
  > One issue I had with the article though, is the overuse of hyperbole. There is no indication of how much of it was fact, and how much was embellishments and exaggerations. That is, in fact, a good summary of the public persona niche occupied by the author!
- J_McQuade 17y ago
  > One issue I had with the article though, is the overuse of hyperbole. There is no indication of how much of it was fact, and how much was embellishments and exaggerations. No, I didn't notice that it was by Jeremy Clarkson to start with, either. For the benefit of the non-Brits, that's just sort of what he does. Seeing him on HN actually makes me feel a bit queasy.
  - frossie 17y ago
    > Seeing him on HN actually makes me feel a bit queasy. I'm with you. I hate this style of straw man argument, for example: "We see the same sort of overreaction to paedophilia. Just because one man in your town likes to watch schoolgirls playing netball" Well obviously if paedophilia was limited to men like watching schoolgirls play netball, and not to people employed in positions of trust to deal with other people's children abusing them horrifically, then yes, that would be an over-reaction. This kind of cartoon argument also makes it hard to have a real debate on the issue. For example we can legitimately discuss the "pants bomber" case - does the fact that one man caught attempting something increase the chances of it being done in the future, or are we like generals always fighting the last war? As to the dog argument I am rather astonished at the hysteria surrounding this pronouncement, given the very high rates of micro-chipping in the UK. And there are a whole number of reasons why dogs should be microchipped for their own welfare.
    - btilly 17y ago
      Worse than that. The pants bomber failed! And while we're at it, so did the shoe bomber! In short the system we already had - no extraordinary measures except a populace who was aware of the danger and willing to act, was sufficient. And furthermore to the extent that we are safe from similar incidents in the future it is because we have a populace who is aware of the danger and is willing to act. Actually, speaking personally, I'm mostly upset at the pants bomber for ruining a good joke. I used to reliably get a good laugh by saying how much worse it would be if the shoe bomber hid the explosives in his underwear. Now that joke doesn't work as well. :-(
    - axod 17y ago
      The point is, it _is_ a massive over reaction. Pedophilia is extremely rare. Getting every teacher to have lengthly criminal record checks done, having CCTV in schools, it's all theatre. But it's damaging. Anyone would think there were monsters lurking outside schools trying to get in to abduct children. It just doesn't happen. Apart from to the 0.000001% unlucky people it does happen to. Which is the whole point. As for dogs, it should be up to the owner if they want their dog chipped or not.
msie 17y ago
I mostly agree with the author, but I like keeping the smoking out of my office.
- jrockway 17y ago
  I agree, and I think we can add some stipulations. If you want to perform an activity that measurably reduces the life of unwilling bystanders, then it should be regulated. That's why you have to drive on the right side of the road and not on the sidewalk, and why you can't dump your toxic waste into peoples' drinking water. Similarly, you can't dump toxic waste into other peoples' breathing air. Externalities -- it's unfair to push your costs onto other people. If you want to smoke indoors, work from home.
  - BigZaphod 17y ago
    Most people would agree with this idea. In fact it's used to justify most of the stupid laws reasonable people hate! In the case of the pet thing, making owners get a license and pass a test and pay for insurance, etc. is all there to protect others from your potentially dangerous pet. The same is true of all the TSA rules - they are justified under the guise of keeping people safe from each other. You can't use such a simple-sounding argument to counter anything because it can be used just as well to justify the stupid stuff in the first place. What's needed is good old fashioned human judgement - but that's no longer allowed. We're slowly making it illegal to exercise your own discretion out of fear that someone else's discretion might be dangerous.
    - ars 17y ago
      Add "frequency of occurrence" to the argument and it works. Smoking is disgusting every time it's done near you. But someone with a dangerous pet is not very common.
      - BigZaphod 17y ago
        Logically, adding in the frequency works - I totally agree. In reality, though, people don't understand frequency and how it applies to them which is why we get into these security theater situations in the first place.
axod 17y ago
Charlie Brooker 'newswipe' is fantastic. Like Jeremy he's a refreshing voice of reason in a scaremongering political correctness gone mad world. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6DD223447015D017&search_query=newswipe http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6DD223447015D017&#38...
Dove 17y ago
It is difficult, especially for politicians, to talk about injustice, accidents, the death of children and innocents, in terms of acceptable loss. It sounds callous. One wants to do better. But if we are to live in a society with basic freedoms, it is exactly what is needed. Intuitively we know this. Setting speed limits to a universal 5 MPH and rigidly enforcing the rule is close to what would be needed to reduce traffic fatalities to zero. But most people love their freedom and mobility. They look at the risk of a fatal accident with the rules as they are and say it's acceptable. And when someone beats the odds and has one, we don't generally blame the laws. We say it's a tragic accident, which is a way of saying an acceptable risk has been realized for someone. We should think the same way about a great many things. Things like aircraft bombing or child abduction are horrific, but low risk. The horror makes us incorrectly disregard the fact that the risk is low--possibly low enough, even, to be acceptable. The problem is compounded by the political and human need to do something. Even if the risk is acceptably low and cannot be meaningfully reduced without draconian measures, people feel the need to bring it down by one means or another. So they do things that don't help. For show. For comfort. Out of confusion. A bit of mathematical clarity and a willingness to label things mere accidents would be helpful. Considering the many men willing to give their lives in wars throughout history to secure better lives for their descendants, it would be a shame if we threw it all away for fear of a few accidental deaths per year. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, the difficult thing about preserving freedom is that one must be willing to accept some low level of evil without doing anything legal to stop it.
- axod 17y ago
  The problem is, people seem to genuinely like living in fear. Maybe it gives them something to talk about, maybe it's like being on a roller-coaster, but the media wouldn't blow things out of all proportion unless there was a market for it. Politicians wouldn't make some of these crazy laws if the public didn't demand it. People buy newspapers less to hear about the real news but to be worried/scared/concerned about stupid stuff they shouldn't care about. I think it's societies fascination with that sort of thing that needs fixing. The vast majority of us will live largely uneventful lives and will die of old age/cancer/heart attack/etc. We're not going to have our kids abducted, be the victim of terrorism, die from swine flu etc. Maybe it's that "You're going to lead an uneventful life" bit that people just can't bear to face. The worst one recently is pedophilia. I went to my sons play at school a while back, and we were told we must not video the play, and at the end we were told we could take pictures, but only of our own children, not of other peoples children, and not of groups of children together! Of course everyone ignored the headteacher and instead used common sense - taking group photos etc, but it's incredibly disturbing to see such ridiculous policies come into place. What sort of message are we sending our kids? (If you haven't seen the Brasseye pedophilia special you should definitely watch it. Classic).
chubs 17y ago
Clarkson is awesome. Interestingly, his 'give me my freedom' bent would put him at good stead with those types from alabama who ran him out of town.
- gort 17y ago
  For those who find this comment cryptic: Clarkson is one of a trio of presenters on BBC TV show "Top Gear". They do various challenges on their show. Once, in a special where they drove across America, the challenge was to get each other "shot or arrested" by painting slogans on each others' cars. While they were driving across Alabama. The slogan that attracted most ire was not "Hilary for president" or "manlove rules OK" but "NASCAR sucks!" And so a mob ran them out of one particular town. Apparently. Incidents on the show have been known to be staged from time to time, so I can't say with complete confidence whether this actually occurred.
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  I'm pretty sure that I read later that the event was staged.
pkulak 17y ago
Ah, yes, that's why I hate Clarkson: "Nor is it normal to stand outside in the rain to have a cigarette..." I've heard this rant 100 times before. Wanna smoke a cigarette around people's children, or beat your wife, or drive a car with no cat that gets 2 MPG and spews 2 dozen cars worth of soot, or about 100 other things you regret not being able to do now? Well, too damn bad. It's not the 50s anymore. Get over it and stop wining.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  I disagree. Clarkson is all about throwing human weakness into sharp relief. So what if that's his opinion. He couldn't care less what we think and neither should we :-) I think people like clarkson are really important to throw some of the idiocies of society into sharp relief.
- BigZaphod 17y ago
  Do you dismiss everything he says or does because of the one thing you disagree with? People are complex and have many facets. You (or anyone) are not required to agree with everything a person says or does to also respect some of what they say and do. I'm not saying you are required to agree with what he says (or even to give a shit about what I say) - I'm just saying that it'd be nice if we (everyone) didn't always seem to be looking for the shortest path to writing off a person as useless.
  - ramidarigaz 17y ago
    >You (or anyone) are not required to agree with everything a person says or does to also respect some of what they say and do. This is another problem that is very similar to what Jeremy wrote about. I see this quite often, mostly in local news. Someone makes a statement that people don't like, and, regardless of their previous standing, suddenly everything they stand for has to be bad. If I had one wish for the world, it would be that everyone becomes just a little more rational. We have to look at the big picture, get around all this maddening nonsense.
- roundsquare 17y ago
  Yes, the cigarette part of his argument was the weakest one. I'm honestly not sure why he included it... unlike his other examples its not a rare event and the cost of the new law is not high. However, if you exclude that line... what is your complaint about the article?
JoeAltmaier 17y ago
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin Of course, he flew a kite in a thunderstorm
- elptacek 17y ago
  Franklin meant Us, not Them.
Mz 17y ago
"Idle hands are the devil's workshop". "That government is best which governs least." -- Thomas Paine It seems to me: Politicians with idle hands are often the architects of inanity of the sort complained about in the article. Once you "hire" them, they have to spend their time feeling like they are accomplishing Something Really Important. Sigh.
- derefr 17y ago
  Perhaps, like other government employees (public school teachers) we should only be paying them for as many days of work as it takes to accomplish what we hired them for, and expect them to take another job to cover the difference.
  - roundsquare 17y ago
    Neat idea in theory, but unfortunately, unlike public school teachers, it can be harder to quantify.
    - Psyonic 17y ago
      And since they are the ones who enact laws, good luck getting them to pass something like that.
  - Mz 17y ago
    Originally, federal senators/representatives were part-time politicians and also had "a real job". Over time, that changed. I doubt you can get the country to go back to that.
    - GFischer 17y ago
      The former president of my country (Uruguay) maintained his "day job" (he was an oncologist, and visited his patients for all 5 years of government). It's not the same scale as an US senator, but you could compare it to a State governor from the smaller US states. We used to joke about the chairman of the hospital, who was "the president's boss".

114 points by kvs 17y ago

Interestingly similar to DRM, where we have to deal with massive limitations on legitimate use while having very little stopping effect on illegal use.

NathanKP 17y ago
Indeed. However, I would suspect that considerably more than 5% of people would download a torrent rather than buying.

vault_ 17y ago

A good reminder that people overreacting is often just as much of a problem as whatever they're trying to solve. One issue I had with the article though, is the overuse of hyperbole. There is no indication of how much of it was fact, and how much was embellishments and exaggerations.

Luc 17y ago
> One issue I had with the article though, is the overuse of hyperbole. There is no indication of how much of it was fact, and how much was embellishments and exaggerations. That is, in fact, a good summary of the public persona niche occupied by the author!
J_McQuade 17y ago
> One issue I had with the article though, is the overuse of hyperbole. There is no indication of how much of it was fact, and how much was embellishments and exaggerations. No, I didn't notice that it was by Jeremy Clarkson to start with, either. For the benefit of the non-Brits, that's just sort of what he does. Seeing him on HN actually makes me feel a bit queasy.
- frossie 17y ago
  > Seeing him on HN actually makes me feel a bit queasy. I'm with you. I hate this style of straw man argument, for example: "We see the same sort of overreaction to paedophilia. Just because one man in your town likes to watch schoolgirls playing netball" Well obviously if paedophilia was limited to men like watching schoolgirls play netball, and not to people employed in positions of trust to deal with other people's children abusing them horrifically, then yes, that would be an over-reaction. This kind of cartoon argument also makes it hard to have a real debate on the issue. For example we can legitimately discuss the "pants bomber" case - does the fact that one man caught attempting something increase the chances of it being done in the future, or are we like generals always fighting the last war? As to the dog argument I am rather astonished at the hysteria surrounding this pronouncement, given the very high rates of micro-chipping in the UK. And there are a whole number of reasons why dogs should be microchipped for their own welfare.
  - btilly 17y ago
    Worse than that. The pants bomber failed! And while we're at it, so did the shoe bomber! In short the system we already had - no extraordinary measures except a populace who was aware of the danger and willing to act, was sufficient. And furthermore to the extent that we are safe from similar incidents in the future it is because we have a populace who is aware of the danger and is willing to act. Actually, speaking personally, I'm mostly upset at the pants bomber for ruining a good joke. I used to reliably get a good laugh by saying how much worse it would be if the shoe bomber hid the explosives in his underwear. Now that joke doesn't work as well. :-(
  - axod 17y ago
    The point is, it _is_ a massive over reaction. Pedophilia is extremely rare. Getting every teacher to have lengthly criminal record checks done, having CCTV in schools, it's all theatre. But it's damaging. Anyone would think there were monsters lurking outside schools trying to get in to abduct children. It just doesn't happen. Apart from to the 0.000001% unlucky people it does happen to. Which is the whole point. As for dogs, it should be up to the owner if they want their dog chipped or not.

msie 17y ago

I mostly agree with the author, but I like keeping the smoking out of my office.

jrockway 17y ago
I agree, and I think we can add some stipulations. If you want to perform an activity that measurably reduces the life of unwilling bystanders, then it should be regulated. That's why you have to drive on the right side of the road and not on the sidewalk, and why you can't dump your toxic waste into peoples' drinking water. Similarly, you can't dump toxic waste into other peoples' breathing air. Externalities -- it's unfair to push your costs onto other people. If you want to smoke indoors, work from home.
- BigZaphod 17y ago
  Most people would agree with this idea. In fact it's used to justify most of the stupid laws reasonable people hate! In the case of the pet thing, making owners get a license and pass a test and pay for insurance, etc. is all there to protect others from your potentially dangerous pet. The same is true of all the TSA rules - they are justified under the guise of keeping people safe from each other. You can't use such a simple-sounding argument to counter anything because it can be used just as well to justify the stupid stuff in the first place. What's needed is good old fashioned human judgement - but that's no longer allowed. We're slowly making it illegal to exercise your own discretion out of fear that someone else's discretion might be dangerous.
  - ars 17y ago
    Add "frequency of occurrence" to the argument and it works. Smoking is disgusting every time it's done near you. But someone with a dangerous pet is not very common.
    - BigZaphod 17y ago
      Logically, adding in the frequency works - I totally agree. In reality, though, people don't understand frequency and how it applies to them which is why we get into these security theater situations in the first place.

axod 17y ago

Charlie Brooker 'newswipe' is fantastic. Like Jeremy he's a refreshing voice of reason in a scaremongering political correctness gone mad world. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6DD223447015D017&search_query=newswipe http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6DD223447015D017&#38...

Dove 17y ago

It is difficult, especially for politicians, to talk about injustice, accidents, the death of children and innocents, in terms of acceptable loss. It sounds callous. One wants to do better. But if we are to live in a society with basic freedoms, it is exactly what is needed. Intuitively we know this. Setting speed limits to a universal 5 MPH and rigidly enforcing the rule is close to what would be needed to reduce traffic fatalities to zero. But most people love their freedom and mobility. They look at the risk of a fatal accident with the rules as they are and say it's acceptable. And when someone beats the odds and has one, we don't generally blame the laws. We say it's a tragic accident, which is a way of saying an acceptable risk has been realized for someone. We should think the same way about a great many things. Things like aircraft bombing or child abduction are horrific, but low risk. The horror makes us incorrectly disregard the fact that the risk is low--possibly low enough, even, to be acceptable. The problem is compounded by the political and human need to do something. Even if the risk is acceptably low and cannot be meaningfully reduced without draconian measures, people feel the need to bring it down by one means or another. So they do things that don't help. For show. For comfort. Out of confusion. A bit of mathematical clarity and a willingness to label things mere accidents would be helpful. Considering the many men willing to give their lives in wars throughout history to secure better lives for their descendants, it would be a shame if we threw it all away for fear of a few accidental deaths per year. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, the difficult thing about preserving freedom is that one must be willing to accept some low level of evil without doing anything legal to stop it.

axod 17y ago
The problem is, people seem to genuinely like living in fear. Maybe it gives them something to talk about, maybe it's like being on a roller-coaster, but the media wouldn't blow things out of all proportion unless there was a market for it. Politicians wouldn't make some of these crazy laws if the public didn't demand it. People buy newspapers less to hear about the real news but to be worried/scared/concerned about stupid stuff they shouldn't care about. I think it's societies fascination with that sort of thing that needs fixing. The vast majority of us will live largely uneventful lives and will die of old age/cancer/heart attack/etc. We're not going to have our kids abducted, be the victim of terrorism, die from swine flu etc. Maybe it's that "You're going to lead an uneventful life" bit that people just can't bear to face. The worst one recently is pedophilia. I went to my sons play at school a while back, and we were told we must not video the play, and at the end we were told we could take pictures, but only of our own children, not of other peoples children, and not of groups of children together! Of course everyone ignored the headteacher and instead used common sense - taking group photos etc, but it's incredibly disturbing to see such ridiculous policies come into place. What sort of message are we sending our kids? (If you haven't seen the Brasseye pedophilia special you should definitely watch it. Classic).

chubs 17y ago

Clarkson is awesome. Interestingly, his 'give me my freedom' bent would put him at good stead with those types from alabama who ran him out of town.

gort 17y ago
For those who find this comment cryptic: Clarkson is one of a trio of presenters on BBC TV show "Top Gear". They do various challenges on their show. Once, in a special where they drove across America, the challenge was to get each other "shot or arrested" by painting slogans on each others' cars. While they were driving across Alabama. The slogan that attracted most ire was not "Hilary for president" or "manlove rules OK" but "NASCAR sucks!" And so a mob ran them out of one particular town. Apparently. Incidents on the show have been known to be staged from time to time, so I can't say with complete confidence whether this actually occurred.
HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
I'm pretty sure that I read later that the event was staged.

pkulak 17y ago

Ah, yes, that's why I hate Clarkson: "Nor is it normal to stand outside in the rain to have a cigarette..." I've heard this rant 100 times before. Wanna smoke a cigarette around people's children, or beat your wife, or drive a car with no cat that gets 2 MPG and spews 2 dozen cars worth of soot, or about 100 other things you regret not being able to do now? Well, too damn bad. It's not the 50s anymore. Get over it and stop wining.

ErrantX 17y ago
I disagree. Clarkson is all about throwing human weakness into sharp relief. So what if that's his opinion. He couldn't care less what we think and neither should we :-) I think people like clarkson are really important to throw some of the idiocies of society into sharp relief.
BigZaphod 17y ago
Do you dismiss everything he says or does because of the one thing you disagree with? People are complex and have many facets. You (or anyone) are not required to agree with everything a person says or does to also respect some of what they say and do. I'm not saying you are required to agree with what he says (or even to give a shit about what I say) - I'm just saying that it'd be nice if we (everyone) didn't always seem to be looking for the shortest path to writing off a person as useless.
- ramidarigaz 17y ago
  >You (or anyone) are not required to agree with everything a person says or does to also respect some of what they say and do. This is another problem that is very similar to what Jeremy wrote about. I see this quite often, mostly in local news. Someone makes a statement that people don't like, and, regardless of their previous standing, suddenly everything they stand for has to be bad. If I had one wish for the world, it would be that everyone becomes just a little more rational. We have to look at the big picture, get around all this maddening nonsense.
roundsquare 17y ago
Yes, the cigarette part of his argument was the weakest one. I'm honestly not sure why he included it... unlike his other examples its not a rare event and the cost of the new law is not high. However, if you exclude that line... what is your complaint about the article?

JoeAltmaier 17y ago

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin Of course, he flew a kite in a thunderstorm

elptacek 17y ago
Franklin meant Us, not Them.

Mz 17y ago

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop". "That government is best which governs least." -- Thomas Paine It seems to me: Politicians with idle hands are often the architects of inanity of the sort complained about in the article. Once you "hire" them, they have to spend their time feeling like they are accomplishing Something Really Important. Sigh.

derefr 17y ago
Perhaps, like other government employees (public school teachers) we should only be paying them for as many days of work as it takes to accomplish what we hired them for, and expect them to take another job to cover the difference.
- roundsquare 17y ago
  Neat idea in theory, but unfortunately, unlike public school teachers, it can be harder to quantify.
  - Psyonic 17y ago
    And since they are the ones who enact laws, good luck getting them to pass something like that.
- Mz 17y ago
  Originally, federal senators/representatives were part-time politicians and also had "a real job". Over time, that changed. I doubt you can get the country to go back to that.
  - GFischer 17y ago
    The former president of my country (Uruguay) maintained his "day job" (he was an oncologist, and visited his patients for all 5 years of government). It's not the same scale as an US senator, but you could compare it to a State governor from the smaller US states. We used to joke about the chairman of the hospital, who was "the president's boss".