Old 08-24-10, 08:34 PM
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khutch
Sumerian Street Rider
 
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Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Suburban Chicago
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Bikes: Dahon Mu P8, Fuji Absolute 1.0

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One of the TV networks has been running a "news" show series about human behavior in a variety of staged ethical situations. By accident I caught parts of a couple of these shows and one was a staged bike theft. Basically if the "thief" was a white male every one ignored him and assumed he was taking his own bike. Even when passersby talked to him and he told them it was not his bike, he was just taking it, they walked on with little or no comment. The race of the observers did not matter, they mostly reacted the same. If the "thief" was a black male he was much more likely to be accosted and in one case the passerby acted like he was about to take physical action. The race of the observers did not matter, they mostly reacted the same. If the "thief" was an attractive white woman, everyone helped her steal the bike!

Then I heard a story on NPR by a Canadian woman who'd had her bike stolen, the dearly loved MTB she had ridden through college. A week or two later she spotted her bike chained to a lamppost just a few blocks from her home. She staked it out in her car to confront the thief. People from the neighborhood eventually noticed her, asked about her business, began bringing her refreshments, and finally helped her cut the chain and recover the bike. Of course she had not ridden it more than a few blocks before she realized that it really was not her bike, there were just too many little things that were not the same. So eventually she put a note on the post explaining what had happened and was able to return the bike to its rightful owner. She never did get her bike back.

The moral is clear though, if you want to steal bikes, hire women as thieves!

Ken
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