As IF Times

link BBC News – Concordia disaster: How safe are modern cruise ships?.

Of course it is possible that Captain Francesco Schettino was on his cell phone or texting at the time, causing him to lose track of where the ship was, resulting in the big fender bender.  If being on a cell phone while driving a car is bad, doing it while steering a ship the length of 4 football fields is the Super Bowl of OOPS!. Following the wreck of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, interested parties from all sides are giving their spin on root causes.  At the moment, the “Captain is at fault” theory is most popular, from the cruise line owner  all the way down of course to the future plaintiffs, of which there will be many.

Apart from the horror that the passengers had to endure from being unceremoniously dumped into the Mediterranean, they also had to watch the brave captain desert the ship, cartoon roadrunner-like in a puff of smoke.  Of course the real grief is about to come and the victims will be people who weren’t even on the ship.  The grief will be inflicted upon all future cruise passengers.

I’m referring of course to experts, lawyers and other professional nanny types who will now review the safety of the cruise ship industry.  There will be countless studies commissioned to determine how to prevent such an accident and to assess the safety of travellers.  While we all know that the root cause is operator error, no doubt the results of exhaustive studies will result in numerous new procedures to be imposed on future travellers.  Higher costs due to ‘safety fees’ will be a given.  The real nuisance will be the new safety procedures mandated by regulators.  The most annoying one will be the requirement to wear life jackets throughout the trip, even while sleeping.  You never know.  As it is, cruisers have to sign a lengthy waiver upon boarding anyway.  Sailing on a cruise ship arguably isn’t as safe as say, sitting in one’s living room, but it ain’t bungee jumping either.

The cruise ship industry spends billions of dollars to build ships with the most technologically advanced materials, navigation systems and implement the most stringent naval protocols.  The last time a big cruise ship sank was almost 100 years ago in 1912 when the Titanic brushed up against an iceberg.  Over the past 100 years, there have been hundreds of thousands of voyages by cruise ships without any big disasters thanks to improvements in materials, technology and techniques.  (The Poseidon Adventure doesn’t count ) Despite this,  all it takes is one human screw up to negate all of those efforts.  So, as in all aspects of our modern life, procedures will be implemented on the many because of the stupid actions of a few.

Most jurisdictions now ban the use of mobile phones in cars because apparently, people can’t be trusted to drive and carry a conversation at the same time.  While eating, applying makeup, fiddling with the stereo, shaving or arguing with the spouse is ok,  talking is not.  Recently, there was reported the ‘alarming’ statistic that there was a big jump in fatalities involving people wearing earpieces while walking along roads.  It’s a fair bet that there will be laws passed against this soon.  Either the wearing of headphones will be banned or people will be required to wear big reflectors on the back of their heads.

And then there’s TSA procedures at the airports, don’t get us started on that.  What’s happening now is unnatural and is only pushing back against theories of evolution. When you try to protect against every possible vicissitude of life, paradoxically, the species is weakened.  The species will lose their own ability to survive in anything other than a completely benign environment, like pet turtles in a bowl or Democrats in California.

To determine if cruising is safe is like trying to determine if the plate was at fault when someone chokes while eating.  There is no fail-safe against operator error.  As in most aspects of life, the solution is elegantly simple.  Punish the idiots, leave every one else alone.

link Joe Soucheray: Tim Tebows fun to watch, but his critics are even more entertaining – TwinCities.com.

There’s an old joke that used to make the rounds up here in Canada which goes like this: A rookie sous chef gets a tour of a kitchen and he notices two pots which are boiling lobster.  He notices one pot has a lid on it and the other one doesn’t.  When he asks the head chef why this is so, the chef replies, “Well one pot is boiling American lobsters, we need a lid to keep them in.  The other one has Canadian lobsters, we don’t need lids on those because if one tries to climb out, the others pull him back in…”

This anecdote has ceased to become relevant based on what we’ve seen happen to culture in the U.S. over the past dozen or so years.  Whether you were a fan of it or not, the Americans as a people used to be known for their ‘can-do’ and optimistic attitude towards things, an attitude that by comparison, Canadians used to lack.  Now it seems to have swung the other way.

A guy comes along like Tim Tebow, who by all accounts is squeaky clean, devoutly religious, is pious and deferential and is essentially the poster boy for a Wheaties box.  Instead of universal adulation, he is disparaged, derided and openly hated by much of the popular media.  Apparently, his good guy persona is an irritating affront to many.  Of course opposing athletes will always be hated, as in the case of Derik Jeter by all non Yankee fans for example.

But the hatred for Tebow is not just because he plays for the opposition, it’s genuine contempt for him as a person.   At a time when many participants in professional sports are known as much for their records with the local DA as for their records on the playing field, Tebow doesn’t fit.   If only he had a history of wife beating, drug dealing, substance abuse, dog fighting or gun violence, he’d be a much more sympathetic figure.  He’d be like everyone else.

Instead, his lack of socially dysfunctional characteristics makes him a juicy target for noted intellectual giants such as Bill Maher and Charles Barkley.  In fact, contempt for Tebow comes mostly from those who don’t even watch football.  They come from that ideologically cynical sector of society that can’t stand the idea that a successful man is driven by faith rather than crass greed and an inflated sense of self worth.  Actually, it’s as amusing to observe the rabid foaming at the mouth of his critics as it is to watch Tebow perform miraculous plays.  In the old days, they used to root for the player to make heroic plays.  Times have changed.  They definitely don’t require lids on the U.S. pots anymore.