Peter Unger should get outside more often, he would find that the only unmanned trains are circling Christmas trees, and horns were made for honking. He also forgot to mention that the parents of the kid playing on the train tracks were no doubt out bungee jumping or surfing! …Writing a book about where to donate your money, I didn’t see the clip about his donating the proceeds to UNICEF? Must not have sold well.

Woody, who are these people that you write about? Are these your friends, or you just making a strawman so that you can vent?

Most people are by nature stay-at-home moms and dads. That’s how we ended up with billions of people on this planet, but some of us choose adventure over diapers. That doesn’t make us irresponsible. We just realize that this is a historically rare time when there are more than enough people on this planet, and there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of willing moms and dads, so the few of us who don’t want children can have our fun without jeopardizing the future of the race.

Alex, your sentiments are commendable, but have you thought about why there are so many hungry children? People who weren’t ready to be parents decided to pop out children by the half dozen. What we need is population control. That way, fewer children will be born into poverty in the first place.

Hi Woody,
I’m – inter alia – a flying nerd, having been a flying instructor for more than a quarter of a century. My experience – here in Europe – is that pilots are really cautious up to about 100 hours. Then they get blase’ . The most dangerous time is around 300 hours. After 1200 hours you get cautious again. New plane types and new (weather) areas get you awake too. Even as an instructor I like to have another instructor check me out regularly, we all form bad habits.

As a Xmas quiz at the local flying club I put 10 problems into my own plane one evening and then had club-members – one after another – do a pre-flight check for a night cross-country, reporting the problems they found. The best found 8, the average score was 5. Some pilots went home much sobered that night, I can tell you!

Stu Savory CFII

Ethicist Peter Singer makes a convincing case against owning any sort of expensive vehicle.  See his essay, “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”, which first appeared in the New York Times Magazine.  Here’s an excerpt:

In his 1996 book, Living High and Letting Die, the New York University philosopher Peter Unger presented an ingenious series of imaginary examples designed to probe our intuitions about whether it is wrong to live well without giving substantial amounts of money to help people who are hungry, malnourished or dying from easily treatable illnesses like diarrhea.  Here’s my paraphrase of one of these examples:

Bob is close to retirement.  He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure.  The Bugatti is his pride and joy.  In addition to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car, Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement.  One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track.  As he does so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway track.  Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train.  He can’t stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked.  Then nobody will be killed — but the train will destroy his Bugatti.  Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch.  The child is killed.  For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents.

Bob’s conduct, most of us will immediately respond, was gravely wrong.  Unger agrees.  But then he reminds us that we, too, have opportunities to save the lives of children.  We can give to organizations like UNICEF or Oxfam America.  How much would we have to give one of these organizations to have a high probability of saving the life of a child threatened by easily preventable diseases?  (I do not believe that children are more worth saving than adults, but since no one can argue that children have brought their poverty on themselves, focusing on them simplifies the issues.)  Unger called up some experts and used the information they provided to offer some plausible estimates that include the cost of raising money, administrative expenses and the cost of delivering aid where it is most needed.  By his calculation, $200 in donations would help a sickly 2-year-old transform into a healthy 6-year-old — offering safe passage through childhood’s most dangerous years.  To show how practical philosophical argument can be, Unger even tells his readers that they can easily donate funds by using their credit card and calling one of these toll-free numbers:  (800) 367-5437 for Unicef;  (800) 693-2687 for Oxfam America.

Now you, too, have the information you need to save a child’s life.  How should you judge yourself if you don’t do it?

Full text of the essay: http://www.petersingerlinks.com/solution.htm

“a friend is using my minivan ” Why are you allowed to have a minivan, which is large, fuel inefficient, obstructs traffic and dramatically outweighs a honda civic, but I can’t drive an SUV?

Better tell people who join the military or drive cabs for a living not to reproduce. I have a feeling a lot more of them have left children father/motherless than individuals racing across the Atlantic or climbing K2.

Am I in the mood to have children? Why, considering the lifestyle I enjoy, would I have children? At the same time though, I could call you a selfish individual for getting into your car and driving to work. Seems about equal risk of death in that to me jumping out of an airplane with an expert, certified instructor. Atleast I don’t have to deal with other idiots falling at 9.8M/s2

Sure Chris, but would you go base jumping when you had a newborn child at home? If so, you’re a rather selfish individual…

Its all about the rush, pushing it beyond yourself. Its intense, and despite what some of you may say you’ve all done it at one time or the other. Oh, you probably don’t do it now because your “worried about your kids” or being a “responsible parent.” Well shit, don’t get out of your bubble then because life is full of risks. Might as well have some fun doing what you enjoy instead of sitting there and waiting for the statistical buggyman to come kill you in your sleep. I’ll take bungy jumping off a bridge of base jumping any day.

Though sailing through waters with icebergs, thats just…too freakin cold.