Do you expect people to suddenly develop hypothetical thinking capabilities (or, no less important, the ability to perform objective analysis on ideas they may consider uncomfortable) out of nowhere at age 18?
Lol.. I expect them to be more capable at age 18. Obviously, I said adults so I'm not just talking about someone over an age, I'm talking about someone who acts like and is an adult- not a juvenile over the age of 18.
More mature, certainly. More capable... much of that comes from experiences, and people like you would shelter kids so much they never have any.
I didn't say that I understood it to be anything other than an assignment "to work out the logistics of running an attack". Doing so would involve contingency planning -- meaning working out not only which attacks would be effective, but what countermeasures might need to be defeated. Thinking about how to defeat countermeasures makes someone able to build better countermeasures by its very nature; you don't design a lock without first learning how to pick them, and you can't learn to pick a lock without knowing something about its design.
And children are employed in counter intelligence and counter terrorism task forces why? I mean why are the children designing the lock in the first place?
I can't believe this even needs to be stated: The purpose of childhood is to prepare one for adulthood. One doesn't need to learn the specific skills one will use as an adult, but certainly the general modes of thought. If you want your nation to be known for genius-level lockmakers, you don't forbid its children from playing with lockpicks; much the contrary, you encourage them. Remember the study to the effect that genius-level skill in anything requires about 10,000 hours of practice, and that those hours almost always start in childhood?
Further, what this particular controvercy teaches children is that anything remotely uncomfortable shouldn't even be thought about or considered at all. I can hardly think of a better way to produce a populace susceptible to "but-the-TERRORISTS-will-get-you!" political scaremongering than teaching them early that the only moral thing to do is to turn off their brains when the subject comes up.
Even selecting a target involves critical thinking -- being able to put yourself in the shoes of those you want to influence. Do you go for a target with flashiness and political impact, or maximal body count? What's the actual end goal? Any of these discussions have serious ethical considerations, and I would be deeply disappointed if our children were such dunderheads as to be unable to investigate them unprompted.
Get disappointed then. Or perhaps you should have kids and not look at them as if they could do no wrong (because they do, usually more then others when their parents are like that).
When did I ever say kids could do no wrong? I didn't say that. If I made any assertion that wasn't spelled out in black and white, it's that kids (in the age range we're talking about here) are smarter than most people give them credit for, when they're given the chance and pushed to be. I stand by that assertion.
Well, perhaps you are right and we should start charging and sentencing children like adults in all cases. I mean why should we have a separate process and lighter sentences if they are fully capable. Clearly society has been wrong throughout all these years and you are right.
Separate sentencing is based on responsibility and maturity -- obviously different things than "smart".
It's a worthwhile assignment, and something I could see spawning a multitude of interesting discussions over the breakfast table.
Why don't we simply let adults take care of that instead of making it a graded homework for our children?
Do you expect people to suddenly develop hypothetical thinking capabilities (or, no less important, the ability to perform objective analysis on ideas they may consider uncomfortable) out of nowhere at age 18?
That's fine and all, but I would imagine of that was the intent of the assignment, then instructions to that point would have been made. According to the article, they were supposed to explain why they picked a certain sector or people and why they thought their attacks would be effective. This assignment is not designed to pick anything you mentioned up other then how to kill others. Perhaps I'm missing something with it? Perhaps you are assuming more then what was stated in the article?
I didn't say that I understood it to be anything other than an assignment "to work out the logistics of running an attack". Doing so would involve contingency planning -- meaning working out not only which attacks would be effective, but what countermeasures might need to be defeated. Thinking about how to defeat countermeasures makes someone able to build better countermeasures by its very nature; you don't design a lock without first learning how to pick them, and you can't learn to pick a lock without knowing something about its design.
Even selecting a target involves critical thinking -- being able to put yourself in the shoes of those you want to influence. Do you go for a target with flashiness and political impact, or maximal body count? What's the actual end goal? Any of these discussions have serious ethical considerations, and I would be deeply disappointed if our children were such dunderheads as to be unable to investigate them unprompted.
It's a worthwhile assignment, and something I could see spawning a multitude of interesting discussions over the breakfast table.
It was more or less a military exercise in how to kill people which is disturbing considering the targets were innocent civilians and the desired outcome was to force an entity entirely different to adopt some political line.
These are good reasons to think about such attacks; what vulnerabilities they would use, how to defend against them, the cost/benefit analysis of such defenses, and the like. How can we expect to be equipped to decide what constitutes a reasonable precaution or an effective security measure if hypotheticals are taboo?
An assignment to work out the logistics of running an attack, beyond being creativity-inducing in and of itself, is certainly going to raise the ethical and moral questions -- at least among any students with the slightest bit of introspection and curiosity.
The US Court has made a poor decision, because they ignored Our Rights in amendments 9 and 10. If such a power exist, it has been reserved to the Member States (or the people).
I'd have to go back and read the article again... but was this done by federal officials or state police?
I read the above discussion thread to be primarily regarding folks complaining their water was too salty or asking for a ride down because the weather was turning, not those whose lives were legitimately at risk.
Folks who get themselves into legitimate trouble are a different, and stickier, matter (though still topical under the article as a whole)
I don't think the grief part of his argument held any kind of water -- but the argument that getting medical care for the child was legally necessary did -- not necessarily with respect to the appropriate course of action under present circumstances, but certainly with respect to the fundamental fairness of the laws currently in place.
If you're going to mandate that someone take an action or have criminal charges drawn up against them, and that action incurs charges sufficient to bankrupt a substantial subset of the population, you've just made a lot of people into criminals or paupers. I don't intend to make any arguments regarding the morality of individual decisions made within this framework, but find it plain on its face that the framework itself is undesirable in the extreme. (Could he have driven the child to the hospital himself and avoided criminal charges if the baby were DOA? I'm guessing so, and admit that this weakens the supporting argument above. Not that the hospital bill would have been free either, so to an extent the same argument applies).
Does the above mean that I'm morally fine with relaxing the legal requirement that parents ensure that their children receive emergency medical care when necessary? As long as medical care remains so expensive as to remain a potentially bankruptcy-inducing cost, yes, absolutely. If someone should be forced to put the rest of their family out on the street because of last-ditch attempts to save a child, when sober consideration of their family's overall best interests would have resulted in following a different course of action, that person has been done a grave injustice.
A third alternative to this, which prevents putting folks out on the street, is giving medical bills reduced priority. This is what has traditionally been done -- letting people get on with their lives (and remain able to pass a credit check to get rent an apartment, for instance) despite medical bills they aren't able to pay. The approach has its benefits -- it doesn't put families out on the street, it encourages medically necessary treatment to be sought and accepted -- though of course there are drawbacks (medical bills for everyone being inflated to cover the costs of those who can't or don't pay). I'm fine with this one, too; are you saying that you aren't?
All things considered -- that's a fair, reasonable, and internally consistent view. I don't think it's the only possible view meeting those three criteria, but we've argued enough at this point that I don't think there's a reasonable chance at consensus.
I felt they were irrelevant, because I do not view the inside of my trash can as a public space.
It's quite common in my neighborhood to put items one wishes to get rid of out on the curb, with the intent that someone in need (or with more time on their hands to refurbish or sell the item) will relieve them of said property. It's in this context that the contents of a trash bin are abandoned -- by placing it on your curb, you've made it explicit that you don't wish to retain ownership of that property. This expectation doesn't exist of contents within your car, making the analogy moot; there's no expectation that someone else will come and pick up the contents of your car and take them away, while there's every expectation of that behavior for your trash.
That said, let's say I agree with your point -- that your trash should be your property until the trash company comes to pick it up, at which time it becomes their property.
That still doesn't prevent the trash company from allowing the police to search what is then their property without a warrant, or prevent a supervisor from such company (which I gather in this case is municipally-owned) from checking that which which was just gifted to them to determine the ratio of recyclables within its contents. In short, even if I grant you your suppositions, it changes nothing regarding the practices that lead to our discussion here today.
It is not abandoned. It is carefully placed in a bin and ownership is intended to be transferred to the garbage company.
An entirely unsecured bin which you don't own, and "intent" with no legal force behind it. And you dodged the supporting arguments made in my parent post.
I don't get people who don't see a problem with the ability of police or anyone else to rifle through your trash.
I don't get people who do. You abandon it, it's not your property anymore; this principal leaves the responsibility for making sure you shred anything in your trash you don't want to be public directly on the person with the most power to make that happen -- you -- rather than depending on some external force to take care of you.
Stray too far from that principal and you get things like making it illegal to photograph public places (because people somehow own the cast-away photons that reflected off their property).
In short -- I'd expect pro-personal-responsibility anti-nanny-state folks, of which you appear to be one, to agree strongly with my position.
You shouldn't be able to do that with my trash can, either.
"Shouldn't", maybe -- but I distinctly recall (from my decade-old constitutional law class, perhaps?) that no warrant is needed to poke through trash set out on the curb. Now, if your trash bin is behind a locked gate (not yet set out), that might be a different matter.
I don't know how common it is, but my cities recycling program costs more on a per-ton basis to collect, sort, and sell to recyclers then what it costs to just bury it. While it may be better for the environment to recycle, until the price difference decreases or flips, what advantage is there to recycle when it ends up costing even more?
Read the fine article. For the city in question, a ton of recyclables sold yields almost as much revenue as a ton of trash buried yields in expense.
I'm trying to remember how the local system here in Austin is working out -- IIRC it's not meeting revenue projections at the moment, but that's principally because they're shipping the recyclables so far to be processed; after a local single-stream facility comes online, projections indicate that recycling should be a fairly profitable endeavor for the city.
Who said anything about knocking on doors? They just have to look through the trash you've put out on the curb... which, last I recall, anyone else could legally do just as easily.
The problem with the vocal mouthpieces is that they are specifically chosen by the opposition in order to paint the whole movement.
...which is endemic to organic movements without sufficient organization to agree on mouthpieces on their own. The Democratic Party gets painted by Obama and Pelosi. The Republican Party gets painted by Bush, Rove, Limbaugh, Beck... people who either really do have either political power or who have acquired substantial soapboxes and are not actively disclaimed.
The Tea Party movement gets painted by whomever looks likeliest to sell the most ads, because they aren't structured enough to present a unified front. I'm not saying it's a Good Thing that groups who haven't done the work to put respectable mouthpieces in place and widely disclaim their nutjobs are viewed mostly via their fringe members; I am saying that there are workarounds available, and that deciding to call yourself a Tea Party member rather than just another strict Constitutionalist means you're choosing to take the associated risks.
And it's a solvable problem without becoming big and evil like the Democrats or Republicans -- heck, even the Open Source movement has successfully put up a unified front with well-recognized organizational gatekeepers. Remember back when every bizarro comment Richard Stallman made was news? Now groups like the OSI have gotten the name recognition and media contacts necessary to put up a professional, businesslike, organized front. It's not as fun as being part of a wild-west movement, sure -- but if you don't want to be represented by every whacko who claims to share a few of your core ideals, it's the cost of playing the game.
Personally, I don't respect the Tea Party much because so many of its members claim to be strict Constitutionalists but had nothing at all against letting the executive branch prosecute undeclared wars or run massive homeland surveillance operations during the Bush years, or how many of them even today think it should be the government's job to say where someone can or can't build a church in New York. If you're going to be serious about a strict interpretation, it's not the place to pick and choose.
"We have to do so much more" sounds a lot like "that thing you're doing doesn't make enough of a difference to be worthwhile; give it up".
Riding a bike has quite a bit more impact than you may think. Last time I saw someone run the numbers, using a bicycle for transportation came within spitting distance of making up for all the environmental damage done by the extra years of lifespan it conferred.
Anti-taxation. Pro-Constitution. Gosh. The insanity.
If that was the extent of the positions that the vocal mouthpieces of the Tea Party movement tended to take, I daresay they'd be substantially less controversial.
Bicycle programs are cheap, compared to widening major roads downtown -- making them a great way to eke out some extra population density in areas where eminent domain just wouldn't fly.
The cities spending money on bike programs aren't only doing so on account of having a strong hippie contingent; cycle commuters are much, much cheaper in terms of infrastructure support than the single-occupancy vehicles they largely replace, and (as people tend to plan their lives to avoid more than 45 minutes commuting each way when possible) cycle commuting encourages folks to move closer to their jobs (helping downtown population density and resulting in a substantial decrease in the number of vehicle-miles traveled). LAB-certified Platinum cities are pushing 6% cycle commuting in the US; it's not Copenhagen, but it's still good enough to have a serious, measurable financial impact.
I got GTA4 working to my satisfaction (memory-editing hackery and save-game hacking in single-player mode is fun, and if I paid for the game, who's to say that I can't/shouldn't?) by using a replacement for the GFWL DLL which stubbed out the icky stuff. Sadly, such a thing isn't available for the entire GFWL-based library.
Typing in addresses and proper names for destinations on a phone keyboard is awful.
Saying "Navigate to La Quinta" and having it figure out the right thing to do (real-world example from a recent vacation, phone running Android 2.1) is far, far more convenient.
Some Android phones. And if you have a dev bootloader (ie. the folks you bought your phone from aren't assholes), there aren't any security exploits involved in the process anywhere.
Also, the set of things you can do on an Android phone without root is substantially larger than the set of things you can do on a non-jailbroken iPhone (replacing the built-in apps, for instance).
I used to have fishercats living in the woods outside my bedroom window. I now know what 'bloodcurdling' means...
This has some recordings of their noise. (I haven't listened to them since I'm at work, so don't know how they compare to what I've heard)
In my case, the scream was in fact from a child in our group (trying to remember how old she would have been at the time... call it 4+/-2 to leave a generous margin); it didn't help that she wasn't immediately visible -- so there was a moment of panic thinking she'd left the tent and been attacked.
People can also lean what sounds are "safe" and what requires "waking up right now"
...and some sounds are just hardwired into the latter category.
The fastest I've ever been awakened, and one of the larger adrenaline jolts I've had, was hearing a child's fear-of-death scream in the middle of the night while camping. Not at all like typical tantrum-style screaming (which, if it wakes me, leaves me in a groggy/annoyed state) -- this was like something grabbed my hindbrain and pulled me out of bed, fight-or-flight fully engaged.
It turned out all was well (though there was some very genuine panic for several moments there -- the area had cougars)... but after that, not one of us got back to sleep.
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More mature, certainly. More capable... much of that comes from experiences, and people like you would shelter kids so much they never have any.
I can't believe this even needs to be stated: The purpose of childhood is to prepare one for adulthood. One doesn't need to learn the specific skills one will use as an adult, but certainly the general modes of thought. If you want your nation to be known for genius-level lockmakers, you don't forbid its children from playing with lockpicks; much the contrary, you encourage them. Remember the study to the effect that genius-level skill in anything requires about 10,000 hours of practice, and that those hours almost always start in childhood?
Further, what this particular controvercy teaches children is that anything remotely uncomfortable shouldn't even be thought about or considered at all. I can hardly think of a better way to produce a populace susceptible to "but-the-TERRORISTS-will-get-you!" political scaremongering than teaching them early that the only moral thing to do is to turn off their brains when the subject comes up.
When did I ever say kids could do no wrong? I didn't say that. If I made any assertion that wasn't spelled out in black and white, it's that kids (in the age range we're talking about here) are smarter than most people give them credit for, when they're given the chance and pushed to be. I stand by that assertion.
Separate sentencing is based on responsibility and maturity -- obviously different things than "smart".
Do you expect people to suddenly develop hypothetical thinking capabilities (or, no less important, the ability to perform objective analysis on ideas they may consider uncomfortable) out of nowhere at age 18?
I didn't say that I understood it to be anything other than an assignment "to work out the logistics of running an attack". Doing so would involve contingency planning -- meaning working out not only which attacks would be effective, but what countermeasures might need to be defeated. Thinking about how to defeat countermeasures makes someone able to build better countermeasures by its very nature; you don't design a lock without first learning how to pick them, and you can't learn to pick a lock without knowing something about its design.
Even selecting a target involves critical thinking -- being able to put yourself in the shoes of those you want to influence. Do you go for a target with flashiness and political impact, or maximal body count? What's the actual end goal? Any of these discussions have serious ethical considerations, and I would be deeply disappointed if our children were such dunderheads as to be unable to investigate them unprompted.
It's a worthwhile assignment, and something I could see spawning a multitude of interesting discussions over the breakfast table.
These are good reasons to think about such attacks; what vulnerabilities they would use, how to defend against them, the cost/benefit analysis of such defenses, and the like. How can we expect to be equipped to decide what constitutes a reasonable precaution or an effective security measure if hypotheticals are taboo?
An assignment to work out the logistics of running an attack, beyond being creativity-inducing in and of itself, is certainly going to raise the ethical and moral questions -- at least among any students with the slightest bit of introspection and curiosity.
I'd have to go back and read the article again... but was this done by federal officials or state police?
I'm pretty sure procreating is a lot like fucking (almost a strict subset, except for the edge cases!) whether behind the wheel or not at the time.
I read the above discussion thread to be primarily regarding folks complaining their water was too salty or asking for a ride down because the weather was turning, not those whose lives were legitimately at risk.
Folks who get themselves into legitimate trouble are a different, and stickier, matter (though still topical under the article as a whole)
I don't think the grief part of his argument held any kind of water -- but the argument that getting medical care for the child was legally necessary did -- not necessarily with respect to the appropriate course of action under present circumstances, but certainly with respect to the fundamental fairness of the laws currently in place.
If you're going to mandate that someone take an action or have criminal charges drawn up against them, and that action incurs charges sufficient to bankrupt a substantial subset of the population, you've just made a lot of people into criminals or paupers. I don't intend to make any arguments regarding the morality of individual decisions made within this framework, but find it plain on its face that the framework itself is undesirable in the extreme. (Could he have driven the child to the hospital himself and avoided criminal charges if the baby were DOA? I'm guessing so, and admit that this weakens the supporting argument above. Not that the hospital bill would have been free either, so to an extent the same argument applies).
Does the above mean that I'm morally fine with relaxing the legal requirement that parents ensure that their children receive emergency medical care when necessary? As long as medical care remains so expensive as to remain a potentially bankruptcy-inducing cost, yes, absolutely. If someone should be forced to put the rest of their family out on the street because of last-ditch attempts to save a child, when sober consideration of their family's overall best interests would have resulted in following a different course of action, that person has been done a grave injustice.
A third alternative to this, which prevents putting folks out on the street, is giving medical bills reduced priority. This is what has traditionally been done -- letting people get on with their lives (and remain able to pass a credit check to get rent an apartment, for instance) despite medical bills they aren't able to pay. The approach has its benefits -- it doesn't put families out on the street, it encourages medically necessary treatment to be sought and accepted -- though of course there are drawbacks (medical bills for everyone being inflated to cover the costs of those who can't or don't pay). I'm fine with this one, too; are you saying that you aren't?
All things considered -- that's a fair, reasonable, and internally consistent view. I don't think it's the only possible view meeting those three criteria, but we've argued enough at this point that I don't think there's a reasonable chance at consensus.
It's been fun!
It's quite common in my neighborhood to put items one wishes to get rid of out on the curb, with the intent that someone in need (or with more time on their hands to refurbish or sell the item) will relieve them of said property. It's in this context that the contents of a trash bin are abandoned -- by placing it on your curb, you've made it explicit that you don't wish to retain ownership of that property. This expectation doesn't exist of contents within your car, making the analogy moot; there's no expectation that someone else will come and pick up the contents of your car and take them away, while there's every expectation of that behavior for your trash.
That said, let's say I agree with your point -- that your trash should be your property until the trash company comes to pick it up, at which time it becomes their property.
That still doesn't prevent the trash company from allowing the police to search what is then their property without a warrant, or prevent a supervisor from such company (which I gather in this case is municipally-owned) from checking that which which was just gifted to them to determine the ratio of recyclables within its contents. In short, even if I grant you your suppositions, it changes nothing regarding the practices that lead to our discussion here today.
An entirely unsecured bin which you don't own, and "intent" with no legal force behind it. And you dodged the supporting arguments made in my parent post.
I don't get people who do. You abandon it, it's not your property anymore; this principal leaves the responsibility for making sure you shred anything in your trash you don't want to be public directly on the person with the most power to make that happen -- you -- rather than depending on some external force to take care of you.
Stray too far from that principal and you get things like making it illegal to photograph public places (because people somehow own the cast-away photons that reflected off their property).
In short -- I'd expect pro-personal-responsibility anti-nanny-state folks, of which you appear to be one, to agree strongly with my position.
"Shouldn't", maybe -- but I distinctly recall (from my decade-old constitutional law class, perhaps?) that no warrant is needed to poke through trash set out on the curb. Now, if your trash bin is behind a locked gate (not yet set out), that might be a different matter.
Read the fine article. For the city in question, a ton of recyclables sold yields almost as much revenue as a ton of trash buried yields in expense.
I'm trying to remember how the local system here in Austin is working out -- IIRC it's not meeting revenue projections at the moment, but that's principally because they're shipping the recyclables so far to be processed; after a local single-stream facility comes online, projections indicate that recycling should be a fairly profitable endeavor for the city.
Who said anything about knocking on doors? They just have to look through the trash you've put out on the curb... which, last I recall, anyone else could legally do just as easily.
Not revenue from the fine -- revenue from selling the recyclables.
The Tea Party movement gets painted by whomever looks likeliest to sell the most ads, because they aren't structured enough to present a unified front. I'm not saying it's a Good Thing that groups who haven't done the work to put respectable mouthpieces in place and widely disclaim their nutjobs are viewed mostly via their fringe members; I am saying that there are workarounds available, and that deciding to call yourself a Tea Party member rather than just another strict Constitutionalist means you're choosing to take the associated risks.
And it's a solvable problem without becoming big and evil like the Democrats or Republicans -- heck, even the Open Source movement has successfully put up a unified front with well-recognized organizational gatekeepers. Remember back when every bizarro comment Richard Stallman made was news? Now groups like the OSI have gotten the name recognition and media contacts necessary to put up a professional, businesslike, organized front. It's not as fun as being part of a wild-west movement, sure -- but if you don't want to be represented by every whacko who claims to share a few of your core ideals, it's the cost of playing the game.
Personally, I don't respect the Tea Party much because so many of its members claim to be strict Constitutionalists but had nothing at all against letting the executive branch prosecute undeclared wars or run massive homeland surveillance operations during the Bush years, or how many of them even today think it should be the government's job to say where someone can or can't build a church in New York. If you're going to be serious about a strict interpretation, it's not the place to pick and choose.
"We have to do so much more" sounds a lot like "that thing you're doing doesn't make enough of a difference to be worthwhile; give it up".
Riding a bike has quite a bit more impact than you may think. Last time I saw someone run the numbers, using a bicycle for transportation came within spitting distance of making up for all the environmental damage done by the extra years of lifespan it conferred.
If that was the extent of the positions that the vocal mouthpieces of the Tea Party movement tended to take, I daresay they'd be substantially less controversial.
How'd you get from Amtrak to bicycle programs?
Bicycle programs are cheap, compared to widening major roads downtown -- making them a great way to eke out some extra population density in areas where eminent domain just wouldn't fly.
The cities spending money on bike programs aren't only doing so on account of having a strong hippie contingent; cycle commuters are much, much cheaper in terms of infrastructure support than the single-occupancy vehicles they largely replace, and (as people tend to plan their lives to avoid more than 45 minutes commuting each way when possible) cycle commuting encourages folks to move closer to their jobs (helping downtown population density and resulting in a substantial decrease in the number of vehicle-miles traveled). LAB-certified Platinum cities are pushing 6% cycle commuting in the US; it's not Copenhagen, but it's still good enough to have a serious, measurable financial impact.
I got GTA4 working to my satisfaction (memory-editing hackery and save-game hacking in single-player mode is fun, and if I paid for the game, who's to say that I can't/shouldn't?) by using a replacement for the GFWL DLL which stubbed out the icky stuff. Sadly, such a thing isn't available for the entire GFWL-based library.
Typing in addresses and proper names for destinations on a phone keyboard is awful.
Saying "Navigate to La Quinta" and having it figure out the right thing to do (real-world example from a recent vacation, phone running Android 2.1) is far, far more convenient.
But, as I asserted, there aren't any exploits involved. "Rooting" a Nexus One can be done using vendor-supported tools in a vendor-supported manner.
No, they aren't. Sure, they aren't marketing the N1 to consumers any longer, but it's still on sale as a dev phone.
Some Android phones. And if you have a dev bootloader (ie. the folks you bought your phone from aren't assholes), there aren't any security exploits involved in the process anywhere.
Also, the set of things you can do on an Android phone without root is substantially larger than the set of things you can do on a non-jailbroken iPhone (replacing the built-in apps, for instance).
In my case, the scream was in fact from a child in our group (trying to remember how old she would have been at the time... call it 4+/-2 to leave a generous margin); it didn't help that she wasn't immediately visible -- so there was a moment of panic thinking she'd left the tent and been attacked.
The fastest I've ever been awakened, and one of the larger adrenaline jolts I've had, was hearing a child's fear-of-death scream in the middle of the night while camping. Not at all like typical tantrum-style screaming (which, if it wakes me, leaves me in a groggy/annoyed state) -- this was like something grabbed my hindbrain and pulled me out of bed, fight-or-flight fully engaged.
It turned out all was well (though there was some very genuine panic for several moments there -- the area had cougars)... but after that, not one of us got back to sleep.