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From: jbrown@jplpub1.jpl.nasa.gov (Jordan Brown)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,misc.legal,alt.flame
Subject: Re: The lawsuit of the year.
Message-ID: <5284@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
Date: 23 Jan 88 07:01:01 GMT
References: <199@fxgrp.UUCP> <10235@mimsy.UUCP> <18816@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <868@xn.LL.MIT.EDU> <8801200541.AA19851@garnet.berkeley.edu>
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Reply-To: jbrown@jplpub1.UUCP (Jordan Brown)
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Organization: Me?  Organized?
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In article <8801200541.AA19851@garnet.berkeley.edu> oreo!gsmith@violet.berkeley.edu (Gene Ward Smith) writes:
>In article <868@xn.LL.MIT.EDU> olsen@ll-xn.UUCP (Jim Olsen) writes:
>>I submit that there is no such obligation.  If I voluntarily lie down on a
>>railroad track, and have a witness call the railroad and tell them where I
>>am and demand that trains be stopped there, is the railroad obliged to take
>>any notice?  It would be nice if they slowed down, but they are within their
>>rights to continue at full speed and expect me to fulfil my duty to clear
>>the track.
>
> It is becoming increasingly clear that most likely the reason
>Willson lost his legs is that too many people believe in this
>institutional right to mayhem.

I don't like rush hour traffic or smog.  I think cars should be abolished.
I'm going to go run in and out of freeway traffic in order to get people
to stop driving.

I don't like the way that airliners are taking over my skies.  I'm going
to go run out onto the runway at LAX to stop them.

These attitudes, while less "trendy" than anti-militarianism, are still
valid.  (It wouldn't be hard to make a good case that pollution is a worse
danger than nuclear war...) The methods proposed to deal with the
situation are not, however, bright.

Sounds to me like the Navy (or whoever) was pretty reasonable.  They
effectively said "We're going on with our business.  Get out of the way."
I don't know the geography of the situation, but 16mph sounds like a
very slow train, allowing plenty of time for people to get out of the
way.  You certainly can't claim that the train jumped out from behind
a tree and hit him.  Regardless of the right or wrong of your movement,
if you think that a train 40 feet away moving at 16 mph is going to
stop before it gets to you, you're stupid.  If you know it can't and
you don't get out of the way, you're suicidal.

Playing chicken is stupid.  Playing chicken when you are sure to lose
is suicidal.

Stupidity used to be a capital offense.  Unfortunately it isn't any
more, and so the average stupidity level in the country is rising.