Remember the Pittsburgh Zoo example of retarded parenting?

Throw the mother in the cage with the dogs and be done with it.

Oddly enough, that same "enclosure" was originally overlooking cheetahs......didn't see any cheetah mailings did we?

yamaha wrote: Oddly enough, that same "enclosure" was originally overlooking cheetahs......didn't see any cheetah mailings did we?

What they fail to say that there was another fence then 25feet in front of viewing area when tge cheetahs were there. They removed it for the dogs because they could not jump that high. So if someone would have fallen there was no way to be mauled..........

i am not saying child proof the world but when you know there is a problem and there is a chance for a child to be hurt then fixed. Not just suggest not doing it which the zoo admitted telling parents and they didnt put signs up

cutter67 wrote: and they didnt put signs up

Signs up that said what? "Don't be a dumbass you shiny happy person and keep your kids behind the railings"?

why i am so tough on this Zoo is because i have worked on every major expansion project at this Zoo. what we as contractors had to go thru to keep the public out of the construction areas was far beyond what was called for. When there is Zoo official sitting in a pre-construction meeting telling us "how dumb the public is" and we better expect anything. then they have a exhibit like that and know there are problems and choose not to do anything shame on them. People do stupid things and always will period.........if my wife called me and said my child was just mauled by a pack of wild animals at the Zoo i would be sueing but most likely i would be in jail for taking a gun down there and shooting people.....and i know most of you will never understand this and just blame her for being a bad parent. i dont know how she sleeps at night or does anything the grief she has to be feeling i cant imagine all for a split second of poor judgement which could of be avoided.............but zoos dont have money they couldnt afford to put up another section of wire mesh

At some point, people have to take responsibility for their actions, or at least that's how I was raised. But this is a terribly antiquated attitude not seen any more.

I cannot count the number of times someone has come in with (insert broken damaged tore up part here) which is due to negligence or whatever on their part and at some point in the 'sorry but this isn't warranty' conversation the words 'but I didn't mean to do it' come out. These appear to be magic words which, when spoken, suddenly shift the burden to the shoulders of others. It's the kind of crap that a 3 year old says after breaking something. But these words come from the mouths of alleged adults.

cutter67 wrote: she has to be feeling i cant imagine all for a split second of poor judgement which could of be avoided.....

This didn't come from one bad decision. This came from E36 M3ty thought processes due to being a E36 M3ty parent (which there are lots of in this world). The parent intentionally put the kid outside of what any decent human being would be a safe area. Thats not a lapse in judgement, thats stupidity. Thats not an accident, thats NEGLIGENCE. She should be charged.

You'd kill other people for your wife's negligence to take care of your child? Paging professor farnsworth...

gamby wrote: Bah--let's just childproof the entire berkeleying planet and give each kid a trophy for making it through each day.

That's what some here want. Pathetic. Take responsibility for you actions. Anyone that thinks it's a good idea to let your child dangle in front of wild animals should be tossed in themselves. There is no excuse for stupidity, but it appears we are making plenty for them.

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

JoeyM wrote: Yup, some critters eat their own poop. It is especially common in hindgut fermenters who break their food down in the caecum (i.e. after the small intestine, where most nutrient absorption occurs.) video explaining why rabbits eat their own poop video of rabbit eating own poop ["This morning's disturbing message brought to you by Biology. For more information....."]

Interesting. One of the young women who ride at my barn was just aghast when my foal started eating his mom's droppings. I laughed, and said "just be glad we don't have to do that".

You guys are right what was i thinking. I am sitting on a job site right now and looking around at all the things we are doing to protect stupid people. Why should i as a contractor have to put up fall protection if you are stupid enough to walk of the edge of a building then shame on you. Lets save the taxpayer millions of dollars by getting rid of all the fencing on overpasses and bridges if someone is stupid enough to jump or throw things at cars below so be it or if a group of teenage boys want to play chicken by walking on the top of the wall and falls so be it........i guess my problem is i am human and i try to loook out for people that do stupid things and when i see something that can get someone hurt or killed i like to try to fix the problem.....when people see there is a problem and nothing is done till someone is hurt or killed i have a problem.......because you know what i have been stupid in my life and it could of ended bad but i was lucky because someone had realized what i did was dangerous and put safety measures in place

They had safety measures in place. IT was a berkeleying WALL there. If you're not smart enough to not put your child on top of a wall overlooking WILD ANIMALS you're a berkeleying moronic idiot that deserves whatever you get at that point. you act like there was nothing at all seperating people from wild animals.

And, especially since the entire lower part of the wall was clear lexan and easily seen through.

Bobzilla wrote: They had safety measures in place. IT was a berkeleying WALL there. If you're not smart enough to not put your child on top of a wall overlooking WILD ANIMALS you're a berkeleying moronic idiot that deserves whatever you get at that point. you act like there was nothing at all seperating people from wild animals.

this

Duke wrote: And, especially since the entire lower part of the wall was clear lexan and easily seen through.

This. If your kid can't see through clear lexan, he needs serious help.

wvumtnbkr wrote: In reply to 4cylndrfury: I take it you're from Ohio. I'm Sorry. Rob R.

if youre not from ohio, then yes, you are sorry

lets look at from the zoo point. You have a viewing area that you are told by employees that the parents are picking their kids up and holding them so they can see. That your are telling them we dont suggest you do that but it just keeps happening. Parents just keep picking their kids up at the railing to see.......as one parent said in interview "i am so lucky i just did the same thing with my child i never thought of her falling in". But you guys are right the hundreds of parents maybe thousands that did it before her are all bad parents and are stupid shiny happy people......

sounds like the zoo was run primarily by animal people and not security people

cutter67 wrote: lets look at from the zoo point. You have a viewing area that you are told by employees that the parents are picking their kids up and holding them so they can see. That your are telling them we dont suggest you do that but it just keeps happening. Parents just keep picking their kids up at the railing to see.......as one parent said in interview "i am so lucky i just did the same thing with my child i never thought of her falling in". But you guys are right the hundreds of parents maybe thousands that did it before her are all bad parents and are stupid shiny happy people......

FINALLY you get it.

Cutter, don't try being reasonable, this is where people go to whine about the decline of society while ignoring all the stupid stuff they themselves do every single day. It's fun feeling superior to other people and glossing over your own faults! I would never do X! I've never made a mistake!

Applying common sense to a situation is idiot proofing the world! Don't tell me otherwise or I'll quote a stupid internet meme and act like you're the problem!

In reply to cutter67:

Ahhh, the added fence would make sense with the cheetahs.

At any given moment on Earth, there are 2.7 million children being held awkwardly and in precarious locations. 99.99999% of the time you don't get the perfect combination of readjusting the grip, the kid squirming, getting bumped by someone backing up to take a photo...

I disagree strongly with the suit. I don't know whether the zoo should do anything differently, but I think it's possible for it to have room for improvement without being liable for this. OTOH, the few photos here have failed to make me an expert on either the enclosure or the possibilities.

I wonder how many children die each year from being fumbled when tossed into the air? I'm not sure I've ever met any parents who don't do that... It's perfectly normal, and I don't advocate stopping it. But you know it doesn't go right every time. What would the peanut gallery say about a case whose synopsis was "Averagetown man drops two year old son eight feet to his death..."

The suit makes me angry, but it's not too hard to imagine a broken shell of a once-reasonable mom being badgered into pretty much anything by the wrong attorney. I don't know whether that's the case here, but in lieu of other info, I'm trying to stick with my "benefit of the doubt" philosophy. If my opinion was going to affect anything maybe it'd be worth traveling there, meeting her, finding out the whole story for myself, and then deciding. But given that I probably have 23% of the facts from conversation on an unrelated forum, I'm going with the possibility that things aren't exactly how they look from here.

I'm not even sure I disagree with the general overall stance, it's just the idea that anybody on this forum knows with any certainty what happened. Anything in your past that would probably read more badly in the newspaper than you'd have described it if you got to explain yourself?

OTOH, the Internet isn't the place for "I dunno. It sounds pretty bad, but who am I to say since I wasn't there and only have the reported summary?"

cutter67 wrote: You guys are right what was i thinking. I am sitting on a job site right now and looking around at all the things we are doing to protect stupid people. Why should i as a contractor have to put up fall protection if you are stupid enough to walk of the edge of a building then shame on you. Lets save the taxpayer millions of dollars by getting rid of all the fencing on overpasses and bridges if someone is stupid enough to jump or throw things at cars below so be it or if a group of teenage boys want to play chicken by walking on the top of the wall and falls so be it........i guess my problem is i am human and i try to loook out for people that do stupid things and when i see something that can get someone hurt or killed i like to try to fix the problem.....when people see there is a problem and nothing is done till someone is hurt or killed i have a problem.......because you know what i have been stupid in my life and it could of ended bad but i was lucky because someone had realized what i did was dangerous and put safety measures in place

Is this what we should aspire to?

It's a laudable goal to want others to be safe and it's a normal thing for those we love, etc. For instance I don't want my daughter getting hurt. I'm not crazy about people getting injured or killed.

But here's the thing: it is not possible for life and the world around us to be 100% safe but there are those who would try to make it that way. And that's backfiring big time in at least two ways: first, people are not watching out for their own safety, figuring someone else will watch out for their safety. No need for common sense.

Second, when something does happen that common sense would have prevented (such as this incident), there's some lawyer instantly there willing to shove the blame off on a 3rd party for being so stupid as to not foresee such a thing happening. This explains the erosion of the concept of personal responsibility; doing something stupid is like picking a winning lottery ticket.

Case in point:

Garage jumping

by Walter Olson on March 2, 2005

By reader acclaim: “Teenagers in Orlando, Fla., are leaping between 80-foot high public parking garages in a new trend called ‘garage jumping.’” And when some of them fail to make it from one structure to the other, what do you think happens next? Right-o: attorney Vincent D’Assaro is now “filing a lawsuit against the city of Orlando and the private garage owner” on behalf of Tim Bargfrede, 18, who fell six stories and was knocked unconscious on impact after a failed jump. D’Assaro says the fence was “very, very short” and inadequate to prevent a teen from (deliberately) making the jump. The family says “both garages need to take responsibility”, it being apparently too much to expect young Bargfrede to do so. (“Teens Leaping For Thrills In ‘Garage Jumping’ Trend”, Local6.com (WKMG-TV), Mar. 1; “Teen survives six-story fall from garage”, St. Petersburg Times, Jan. 1).

http://overlawyered.com/?s=parking+garage+fall

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/01/01/State/Teen_survives_six_sto.shtml

There is a big difference between safeguarding against "accidents" and having to prevent every conceivable stupid thing that people might possibly do.

In reply to cutter67: Yes. Yes, they are stupid berkeleying shiny happy people.

I'll come to your construction site, climb over your fence on top of a wall, fall and break my back, then sue the ever living E36 M3 out of you, because your fence want high enough. Or some E36 M3 like that. Berking idiot me shouldn't have climbed over the reasonable safety measure, but you're going to pay, God dammit!