Why I hate the world right now

I spent most of the other day hating the world when I heard about some wealthy high school teenagers, children of millionaires, who were partying and watched two of their peers fist-fight. One of the fighters was knocked unconscious, and the kids left the knocked-out kid there because they were afraid if they called the police they'd get in trouble for all the underaged drinking, etc. Then, later, they went back to where the kid was STILL lying unconscious and picked him up -- maybe to drop him on the hospital's doorstep anonymously -- but dropped him, and he died.

There are too many reasons out there to hate the world.

For me, the world is essentially neither good nor bad; it is neutrally balanced between the two extremes, shifting back and forth between the two, at times. But it is up to us, each of us as individuals and us as groups of humans, to work to encourage the pendulum to swing more to the 'good' then the bad. Take this anger and fear and frustration at that in the world whicj sickens you and turn it into something positive: volunteer to read to kids; visit people in nursing homes; plant trees; stop and move a turtle off the road; open the door for the woman with screaming children and offer her a smile of sympathy. This list is limited only by our imaginations.

It is sad but true that when we learn of such horrors such as Ned as brought to our attention that we immediately have a visceral reaction of anger and disgust and an over-riding need to hug and become closer to those that we love. But then the shock of the trauma wears off and we return to taking to lives and gifts of those that we love for granted.

Instead of hating the world, resolve to make it a better place. Take advantage of the grief that you feel and turn it to something healing - don't let go of realization that life is precious, and then maybe some good can come from this hellish event.

xxx to all.

Personally, I could never hate the world. Even after what happened to my cousin and to my father this past year, there is no resentment toward the whole human race there. I simply rejoice in the little things, the happy moments, the times when humanity proves its goodness vs. proving its cruelty or stupidity. For example, now you may see tons of local news reports wherein reporters go up to and harrass parents who would attempt to try this stunt again, and more people will become vigilant about these sorts of things.

Love to all those little kids, whether they're yours or someone else's or even ones you wish wouldn't be screaming so loudly during the day or night. Because they all deserve love.

Ned, this is one of the most touching things I've ever read in my entire life.

I have no idea how I'll react whenever (or indeed, if ever) I see her next. Strict formality would seem cold, but how does one express sympathies in a situation like this without sounding at the least awkward and at the most potentially gravely insulting?

*sigh* It's not something that's going to immediately keep me up nights or anything (and indeed I slept well this past night), but it will, to say the least, nag.

It also turns out the baby was in the car for three hours, apparently initially in the shade.

I can't say anything to that and I won't. I just stare at that dumbly.

My thanks for everyone's kind thoughts.

Nwd, if you remember my post-grad Research Associateship in the Dept of Ed--I was co-PI with the dad, and Brenda was an RA, so this is really weird for us. I stayed over at Brenda's last night, talked to Chris a couple of times on the phone and both of us thought about it all night, reaching no conclusions, feeling horrible for the mother and having plenty of mixed pity/outrage at Mark (the dad). I think it would have been easier to deal with if we didn't know him.

She's been touched and horrified by it, but has been busy with a sudden acceleration in her plans for a new floor and that has taken her mind off of it to an extent, happily. But she's as saddened as we are.

I think it would have been easier to deal with if we didn't know him.

No doubts on that score. My best to all three of you.

Is this the Virginia case? The father in the case I'm thinking of more or less just got a slap on the wrist because he was the "absent-minded professor" type. That struck me as just about as horrifying as the death itself.

Infant Son Left in Car by UCI Professor Dies

The father leaves the 10-month-old in his vehicle at the university. The boy is found more than three hours later. Charges are possible.

By David Haldane and Christine Hanley, Times Staff Writers

A 10-month-old boy died Friday after his father, a UC Irvine professor, left him unattended for more than three hours in a locked car on a campus parking lot in 80-degree heat.

Authorities did not release the father's name, but several law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, and neighbors identified him as Mark J. Warschauer, 49, vice chair of the university's Department of Education and an associate professor of information and computer technology.

"He arrived on campus about 8:30 a.m., parked, locked the car and went in," said Lt. Jeff Love, a spokesman for the Irvine Police Department. "About noon he saw a commotion around the car, came out and learned that he'd left the child in there. Apparently he didn't realize it."

The child, whose family called him Mikey, was discovered by passersby in the four-door vehicle parked in a lot adjacent to the university's education department in the 400 block of Berkeley Avenue, where Warschauer works, shortly before noon. They notified campus police officers, who shattered the car's rear right window and removed the boy. He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.

"It's a terrible, terrible event," Love said. "Really bad. Our investigators are looking into it. Obviously a child died, so there could be criminal charges of child endangerment."

Love said an autopsy will be performed next week.

"Based on the autopsy, I think we'll know by next week if there will be child endangerment charges," he said.

It is not unusual for charges to be filed in such cases. Late last month, a Lancaster day-care operator pleaded not guilty to child-abuse charges after two of her foster sons died of heat exposure when they were left unattended for hours in her car. A Fontana man was arrested on suspicion of murder last year after his 3-year-old daughter died in his van where he had allegedly left her in 102-degree heat. Also that year, a Simi Valley mother was ordered to serve a year in county jail after pleading no contest to leaving her two young sons, who died, in a sweltering minivan while she lay asleep after drinking some wine.

The father in the Irvine case was questioned by police Friday, Love said, but not arrested. People at his home on Harvey Court near the campus declined to comment Friday, as did university officials.

According to a resume posted on the university's Web site, Warschauer has been at UCI since 2001 when he arrived after being director of educational technology at the U.S. Agency for International Development in Cairo. Before that, the resume says, he was a Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic and taught at universities in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco and Moscow. The resume indicates that the professor is an expert on the integration of information and communication technologies who has written several books on that and other subjects. His interests, it says, include bicycling, chess and water sports.

Neighbors Friday described Warschauer as a doting father and said that he and his wife of five years, Keiko Hirata, wanted very much to be parents and had used fertility drugs to conceive.

"Keiko and I are happy to announce that our first child, Michael Kai Warschauer, was born Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2002, at 3:59 p.m.," the professor wrote last year in an Internet newsletter he publishes called Papyrus News.

Among Warschauer's duties was dropping the baby off at a day-care center, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the case. Neighbors on the street where he and his wife live said they couldn't imagine what happened on Friday.

"I said, 'There's no way — it could not be him,' " said Patricia Torres, sobbing after hearing the news.

Torres and her husband, also a professor, said the Warschauers were incredible parents, very responsible and loving, who always talked through every decision regarding their son, especially those involving child care.

"They were always concerned that Mikey might get a cold at day care," said Patricia Torres, adding that Warschauer had recently been given tenure, which was important to him because he was looking forward to raising his son in the neighborhood. "They love Mikey more than anything."

Kristie Hickok, another neighbor, agreed: "He just loved that baby. He brought him around and would say, 'Say hi, Mikey.' "

Late Friday afternoon, the family car - its rear window still broken - sat parked in front of the house.

"I can't believe this would happen to this man," Hickok said.

Often, she said, Warschauer could be seen carrying Mikey around the neighborhood on his hip or playing with him on a blanket in the frontyard.

"He was more devoted to his kid than any man I know," she said. "He was just an unbelievable dad. He loved that baby like he was his last breath I just saw him two days ago playing on the grass with him. He was a very happy little kid. It's very sad."

*hugging Lukas very hard*

You don't do this you don't do this YOU DON'T DO THIS...

Doesn't make him any less of a complete fucking moron for leaving his baby in the car in the first place, though.

Love to everyone.

well, good. he should be. forgive me if i don't feel that sympathetic.

> and I know Stripey must be freaking out (Orbit)

She is. She is.

-- But Dan's right. As much as I hate the stupidity of it all -- of leaving a baby ... ALONE ... IN A CAR ... FOR THREE HOURS ... ON A HOT SUMMER DAY -- as much as I hate that, I know that each one of us is capable of that same stupidity, but we've just been lucky enough not to have our stupid moments turn fatal on us.

For instance, about two years ago, I committed an incredibly stupid act that could have been fatal : I let my friend's eight year old daughter sit in the front seat of my car (my car with the half-dozen airbag warning stickers all over it, mind, that say very boldly "DO NOT LET CHILDREN SIT IN THE FRONT SEAT OF THIS VEHICLE!").

I was familiar with that rule, I'd looked at those stickers every day since I bought the car (since the stickers are non-removable), but still, when the time came to drive my friend's kid home, for a moment, I totally blanked out about that rule and told the kid that she could sit in the front seat, so that she could direct me how to get to her house.

Luckily, this eight-year-old was a sharp kid -- she'd been trained by her mom to say "Oh, I can't sit in the front seat -- the airbags might hurt me!" And it was that one sentence of hers that snapped me back into reality, and made me realize what an awful mistake I was in the process of making! And believe me, I felt terrible about it for days after. I even confessed to my friend that that's what happened, and she brushed it off lightly, bless her heart ... but I haven't driven her kid home since then, and I think we both prefer it that way.

So I'm torn. I'm torn between feeling hatred for the parents who could "forget" something that is so unforgettable as an infant (at ten-months, kids require so much attention, feeding, diapering and etc that it seems impossible not to be reminded of their existance constantly), and also for feeling pity for those same people, because their moment of blinding stupidity resulted in a fatality (unlike mine). Call it fate, or chance, or what you will, but it will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Much longer than it will haunt any of us.

Not making a value statement (at least publicly) either way, just passing along the info.

Three years later, CNN has a followup story

Unequal justice for two fathers in hot car deaths

California college professor is not prosecuted
Florida race track worker is sentenced to 20 years, faces deportation to Peru

(AP) -- Two hot cars. Two dead infants. Two grieving fathers.

Two very different outcomes.

College professor Mark Warschauer says he simply forgot his 10-month-old son Mikey was in the car. Horse groom Antonio Balta claims he didn't know the car would get hot enough to harm his 9-month-old daughter, Veronika.

Neither man meant to harm his child. But that doesn't always matter in the eyes of the law.

Mikey's story

A baby lay lifeless on a stretcher, a car window shattered nearby, paramedics swarming.

How sad, Mark Warschauer thought. Then he realized it was his car.

It was Mikey.

If there was ever a miracle baby, Michael Kai Warschauer was it.

For five years, Warschauer and his wife, Keiko Hirata, struggled with infertility. They had undergone in-vitro fertilization, only to see more than a dozen embryos fail.

The grateful parents reveled in their dark-haired boy, filling page after page with photos of them cuddling, playing and laughing together. Appreciating what a precious gift they'd received, the couple studied parenting books and even brought in a child-safety expert to inspect their home.

"Mikey was the most loved and adored baby on earth," says Warschauer.

Like many, the Warschauers were a two-career family. Mark Warschauer is a professor at the University of California, Irvine, a leading expert in the field of technology and learning. Hirata is an award-winning political-science professor specializing on Japan and East Asia.

The morning of August 8, 2003, Mark Warschauer was tired and stressed out. His wife was trying to wean Mikey, and he'd gotten up at 3 a.m. trying to get the bright-eyed 10-month-old back to sleep.

When he drove to work that morning, he was "on automatic." Mikey had fallen asleep in the back, dozing quietly in his rear-facing car seat.

Instead of going to day care, Warschauer went straight to campus, parked his car and went up to the office. His "life of grief" began three hours later.

"At your greatest moment of need, I failed you horrifically," Warschauer said in a eulogy for his son. "Worst of all, I have no explanation for what I have done. I cannot understand how I, who loved you more than the air I breathed, who would have gladly given my own life for you, could have done such a thing."

Authorities ruled Mikey's death an accident and decided not to prosecute. But Warschauer cannot let himself off quite so easily.

"I take full responsibility for Mikey's death," he said during a recent interview at a coffee shop across from campus.

Warschauer has said these words to groups, written them on a Web site dedicated to his son, recorded them in public service announcements. It is a story he is loath to share, but feels obligated to do so. He wants to spare other parents the grief he has experienced.

Since Mikey's death, the Warschauers have had three more children, including twins. Warschauer knows Mikey's death was a tragic fluke, but he knows he can never fully trust himself again.

Inside each of the two family cars is a leather briefcase strap. When Warschauer buckles a child in, he clips the strap to his belt loop, so he can't leave the car without being reminded that he's not alone.

"It's my cue," he said

Veronika's story

Nine-month-old Veronika Balta grew up around the ponies.

Her father, Antonio, was a thoroughbred horse groomer who followed the racing circuit from New York to Kentucky to Florida. Her mother, Michelle Bashford, waited tables at the various track clubhouses.

The couple couldn't afford day care, so Balta would park Veronika's stroller in the stables while he worked on the horses. Balta would talk to his little "mami" -- short for mami chula, Spanish for "pretty mommy" -- while he washed and brushed the horses.

"I had to be at work at 4 in the morning to 11 or 12 in the afternoon," the 30-year-old Peruvian native says in soft-spoken, heavily accented English. "Basically it was me and her relationship, because the mother used to work all day, 9 in the morning to 7. So I got her by myself all these hours."

On March 14, 2004, the couple were packing up to return to upstate New York. Bashford was finishing up her last shift at Gulfstream Park north of Miami; Balta decided to try and pick up a little more spending money at the betting windows.

Veronika cried around large crowds, so Balta says he left her in the car. He cracked the windows just a hair, he says, because he was afraid someone might take her.

The first two times Balta left the air-conditioned betting parlor to check on Veronika, she was playing happily with a stuffed toy that he'd won for her in a Kentucky claw machine -- a rabbit dressed in a striped prison uniform. But then he got caught up in the races, and before he knew it, about 45 minutes had gone by.

When he found Veronika, she was limp, her eyes rolled back into her head.

"I tried to wake her up but when I carry her like this," he says, gesturing as if holding a baby over his right shoulder, "... milk came out of her mouth."

The temperature was mild when Balta got to the track that day. He says he had no idea the car could heat up that quickly.

At trial, a psychologist testified that Balta's IQ was just 74. Balta's defense attorney called him "borderline retarded."

Balta pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and threw himself on the mercy of the court. Circuit Judge Ilona Holmes had none.

She declared Balta's actions "totally callous" and sentenced him to 20 years. When he gets out, he will be deported.

Sitting at a break room table in the maximum-security Desoto Annex prison in Arcadia, Florida, Balta fingers through photos of the little girl who shortly before her death had spoken her first word -- Daddy.

"It's like I lost my soul," he says, almost in a whisper. "When I lost her, it's like a big chunk of my heart came out."

Balta agrees that he deserves to be punished. But he wonders what good it will do to keep him locked up for 20 years.

"This place is not going to bring my daughter back," he says. "I have learned from my mistakes already. ... I'm not the same person. I never been a bad guy, never. I did a mistake."

Calling this "unequal justice" is disingenuous. Only one of them involves willful neglect.

There have been a few cases in Belgium similar to the one that Ned mentioned. Now, I am not saying, I repeat, I'm not saying that this should be overlooked, but, y'know, being a parent can be very tiring and confusing. Before anyone (who's not a parent of a baby) says: "Well, SLEEP, or WHATEVER. Just don't do this." Well, that is easier said than done. Especially the first couple of months can be so tiring, you literally feel like you're living in a bubble trying to drain those last few drops of energy from your body. I'm not saying this should be excused, but it's one thing to murder your child and another to forget. Sometimes you have a wacky schedule and you just... well forget. It's wrong, yes, but somehow I can understand this happening. This hasn't happened to me, mind you. But I have made... not mistakes, sometimes in a split second it can all go wrong. I didn't close the door once and she stepped out. I completely freaked out feeling like the worst mother walking on this planet. Every parent has a story like this. My father didn't pay attention once and I was standing on the ledge looking a few floors down. (My parents lived in a flat at the time.) He had nightmares for weeks and weeks after this incident.

But that's not the second guy's excuse-he PURPOSELY left his baby in the car. In Florida for fuck's sake. I wouldn't leave my pet lizard in the car, much less my kid.