Profiles In Irresponsiblity

Let’s NOT talk about horses in Enumclaw!

When my readers speak, I listen. I did a quick reader survey this week and two out of three readers agree that I should never in any column whatsoever discuss non-veterinary procedures involving horses on Enumclaw farms, as to do so may offend. The third reader was a sick bastard. Therefore I’m going to talk about something sure not to offend, namely infant death, imprisonment, and professional misconduct.

What I want to talk about is Sir Roy Meadows and his troubles. This is a story with a moral, having to do with the idea that everyone is entitled to his or her opinions and everyone has a right to be wrong sometimes. Well, sometimes, maybe, but not always! As Sir Roy has recently learned.

Roy Meadows is a British pediatrician whose testimony in British courts has sent several mothers to jail for murdering their infants, based on the idea, known as Meadow’s Law, that “one sudden infant death is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder until proved otherwise.” That was in turn justified by his calculation that the odds of SIDS occurring twice in an affluent family were around 73 million to one.

Here’s a law of my own, I call it Browning’s Supposition: any statistic that’s more accurate than the raw data it could be or is supposed to be based upon is bogus on its face. My law tells me for example, that in Star Trek’s “Errand of Mercy,” when Spock says that his and Kirk’s odds of surviving are approximately 7824.7 to one, and I know the Vulcan smart-ass can’t even see around the next corner, I can safely conclude Spock is up to his pointed ears in BS.

Meadow’s calculation is even worse than that. He started with the odds of one case of SIDS occuring in a family and simply squared it to get the odds that it happens twice in the same family. In doing so he tacitly assumed that each non-homicidal instance of sudden infant death was independent of every other such instance.

In fact though, there may be genetic factors, or environmental factors, or innocent childcare practices that could result in SIDS. Meadow’s disregarded all those possibilities.

You’ve probably seen the signs that say, “Back to Sleep.” It’s been shown that putting babies to bed on their backs dramatically reduces incidents of SIDS. That one discovery alone proves that SIDS isn’t wholly random and that there are causes that can run in a family.

Which wouldn’t matter if Meadows’ opinion were just the opinion of a crank doctor who also believed, say, that cows could fly provided only that the air they stepped on could be made hard enough. We would call that quaint, and we’d knight him, and we’d expect him to live like one of those old codgers in every episode of The Avengers, walking around in their mansions in the country sipping tea out of a hose attached to a robot filled periodically by a loving maid, who turns out to be the real villain, so we can see her and Mrs. Peel fight it out at the end.

Meadows ‘expert’ testimony in courtrooms, and his popularized Law, and his bogus calculation of odds were all used to convince juries to convict at least hundreds, perhaps thousands, of parents for the murder of their own children over the last decade. But a lawsuit in Britain that began in 2003, charging him with professional misconduct, has finally concluded that his testimony was false, that he abused his position as a doctor, and he has been banned from practicing medicine in Britain.

Hmm. Reckless expert opinions by crank experts only seeking power and influence, leading to tragic consequences – who might I be really talking about, I wonder? And can I work in an ancient TV reference? We’ll have to find out some other time.

Star Power

I am happy to report that great new opportunities for lucrative employment for us homeless people are opening up. I'm not talking about day labor, not yard work, not washing dishes, but something specific to the homeless, something we can, in principle, do better than anyone else.

We can play homeless people on TV!

So there I was hanging out at the Real Change dump, getting my ears blasted by 120 decibels of Critters Buggin, trying to get some writing done, trying to forget that I could instead be writing to a mere 60 decibels in a cafe if I just had enough money for a cup of coffee to justify my presence at one, when a call came from Magic Hour Films in Belltown.

They were doing an ad for United Way about programs for homeless youth and needed six older homeless types as extras in the ad. Could the Real Change to send some on over? "Why, sure, we could ask some vendors if they'd be interested. And Dr. Wes is here right now, we're sure he'd do it. Dr. Wes will do anything."

What a great gig! I was paid $10 an hour to wait 4 and a half hours until they needed me. While waiting we got to watch television, drink coffee, and eat sandwiches. They also asked us all to smoke, and to save up our cigarette butts in a cup, for props. No problem!

In fact the only problem that surfaced was that the film company expected that we would all be much more scary looking. As our director Holly said, after lining us up to look at us, "They're all so NICE looking!"

So, OK, maybe homeless people can only play themselves best *in principle*. Actors may still be required to get the stereotype down.

But I tried hard to oblige when it was my turn to be filmed. After all, all I had to do was sit on a step and root through the "props" while staring with annoyance at the hand-held camera as it was walked by, something that comes as natural as breathing. Took three minutes to tape it three times.

I'm going to see if I can't do this more often.

Non Sequitur

or Opus Marcus Sidranus

I'm not going to complain about Sidran,

though he's given me brand new reason:

He now wants to be given authority

to rid parks of rampant illegality

without bothering with due process

as laws and courts are such a mess!

What a truck-load of BS!

We elected him to make them work!

But, no, I'm not going to do it.

I'm not going to say he's a ____.

Instead I'll just change the subject, and talk to myself aimlessly -- as we crazy homeless people are apt to do, scaring the decent folks away from the city parks and sidewalks that belong only to them.

I am asking myself why I do this. Why do I write? After a few cups of reheated coffee, and a half-dozen cigarettes, the reasons slowly return to me.

1. Attracted to the wild lifestyle -- writers really know how to party!

2. To annoy politicians and collect fun hate-mail to show off to my friends.

3. Getting too old to make it as an exotic dancer.

4. But not too old to make it with "writer-groupies."

5. I've always enjoyed working with my fingers.

6. Why not? What's going to happen? That nobody reads it? If I don't write it, how are they going to read it?

7. If I didn't, Tim the Editor God would chase me away from this computer. No more reheated coffee.

8. "Uh, I can't attend your important meeting, I'm on deadline."

9. "I'm a writer" sounds better than "I'm chronically unemployed."

10. I was MADE to sit on my ass all day. This is my essence.