As IF Times

link  NYPD Warns Women About Skirts in Brooklyn Sex Attack Probe | NBC New York.

Interesting that we’ve yet to hear from national human rights groups protesting about this NYPD warning.  Sure, the expected bit of chirping has come from the local organizations,  but the mentality of stupidity of the NYPD’s warning is not fully appreciated by most readers.

It’s a certainty that they think they are doing women a public service by warning them not to dress in a certain way.  While there are certainly women out there that make Britney Spears dressed for a night on the town look like a nun, a google search fails to find any instances of women in short skirts or shorts committing regular acts of crime, violent or otherwise.  Oddly, we don’t see news stories of roving bands of women in short skirts terrorizing neighborhoods.

On the other hand, countless surveillance videos at 7-11’s, shopping malls, train stations, night clubs and parking lots show that people wearing hoodies and or baseball caps are over represented in the committing of violent crimes and robbery.  Wouldn’t it make more sense to ban people wearing such clothing, or at least warn them that such attire will cause them to be harassed by police?

The rights of potential perps have long ago surpassed the rights of victims in the perverse world of political correctness. This is but an egregious example of how extreme it has gone.   Rather than focus on discouraging the activities of those that exhibit anti-social and criminal behavior, liberal apologists instead would rather curtail the activities of law abiding citizens.  We are asked to purchase all sorts of personal and property security as well as pay usurious insurance rates rather than sufficiently deter and punish criminals.

We are hit on the head constantly with the old chestnut about not being able to tell a book by its cover, but that sentiment is more the exception than the rule in real life.  In the animal world, survival depends on being able to distinguish friend from foe with very simple visual cues.  Lamb= friend, lion, not so much.  It’s possible there there once existed animals congenitally programmed with curiosity to approach obvious predators.  But they are extinct.

In the much more highly evolved human societies, we are conditioned to ignore obvious danger cues from our surroundings on the premise that ‘the law’ will protect us from harm.  This would not be an issue except for the fact that those with such misguided notions often wind up in political office and such errant beliefs are imposed on an otherwise sane public.  In the animal world, they would simply be eaten.

The NYPD have it all wrong.  The philosophy should be to make life miserable for the perps, not the regular folk.  Pick on the guys wearing hoodies in summer, sideways ball caps and baggy jeans.   Heck, we’d be better off if everyone wore short skirts.  That would make it easy for them to pick out the perps from the crowd.   Maybe the Scots had something….

link 2013 BMW M5 Test Drive – BMW M5 Review – Popular Mechanics.

It’s amusingly predictable that in any given year, all ‘prestige’ branded cars such as Mercedes, BMW, Porsche or Audi are offering models that are either bigger, faster, handles better,  is more luxurious or all of the above.  The entry bar for any one of these prestige marques is  easily a minimum of $90,000…plus tax, luxury tax, gas guzzler tax, dealer prep and undercoating. 

This is incongruous because never before in the history of the automobile have gasoline prices been higher, speed limits so avidly enforced and the whole idea of conspicuous consumerism so widely frowned upon.  When one reads the statistics that describe some of these cars, it’s lunacy.  In the case of the spiffy new BMW 550i model described in the article, the company claims it puts out 560hp and 500 lb-ft of torque.  Granted, this all happens with a claimed 30 per cent fuel economy improvement over it’s previous generation model, so we won’t dismiss the engineering involved.  But 560 hp?  Imagine the image of 560 horses tethered to the front of a wagon and one gets the idea of how much power we’re talking about.  In other words, on any given farming community of 50 years ago, there wouldn’t be as many horses figuratively pulling plows around as there would be pulling  just one rich guy in a car today.

The speed and acceleration claims are also amusing.  Most prestige cars eligible to even be included in the group have acceleration times of from 0 to “hello officer” or 60 mph in less than 6 seconds.  In the case of the “new and improved” Porsche 911, this number is sub 4 seconds!  Why?  In most cities these days, 60 mph is over the speed limit already, so what’s the cachet of being able to reach it in a scant 4 seconds? None of this makes any sense in a world where increasingly people are pressured to conform, to adhere to some arbitrary standards and expectations of ‘responsible’ behavior and most of all, to be green. 

But so what?  If there are idiots out there willing to pay out big money to access superb pieces of engineering, then there should be companies which are allowed to cater to them.   At a time when so much of people’s daily lives are restricted by the smothering nannyism of the state, at least there are still those that are able to thumb their noses in some small way against this PC crowd. Good for those that are able to buck the pressure to drive around in eco-weenie vehicles the size of shopping carts. 

It goes against human nature to settle in as part of the crowd.  There are always those that want to be bigger, richer, faster, better or more good looking.  That is what has always driven people to success.  If this were not the case, we’d have no fashion and clothing industry.  We’d all be wearing Mao suits.  Buying prestige cars that reflect this mentality is a not so subtle way of advertising this.  Car makers have always understood that purchases are all about statements about the purchasers themselves.  Even purchasers of Prius’ are making a statement, that of being politically correct and of being a  subscriber to the weenie dictates.

So as ridiculous as some of the statistics and features of the newer cars may be, they fullfill a role in society.  They provide an outlet for people to express themselves in a time when there is overwhelming social pressure to conform. They are still a symbol of aspiration and achievement no matter how nonsensical they may be.