As IF Times

link Super Spicy Snacks Send Kids to Emergency Room – ABC News.

The finger wagging nannies which increasingly run government and exert their influence upon the lives of the regular folk never seem to run out of things to regulate.  Over the years, many simple and innocuous pleasures and activities partaken simply for their amusement or convenience have been done away with because someone thought the activity was too dangerous or  too offensive.

Long gone are the days when you could just pile a bunch of your buddies, or your excess children, into the back of the pick-up truck for a ride to the beach.  In most cities, it is now illegal to hop on a bike for quick trip to the store without first wearing a helmet. It is illegal to drive infants around in cars without approved car seats.  I guess someone can make the case that wearing seat belts or not texting while driving through mountain passes may be good ideas, but do we need to expend untold amounts of money on police work to enforce this?

It’s  the regulation of simple things that people do purely for self amusement or enjoyment that are annoying.  We are familiar with nanny Bloomberg’s efforts to regulate the size of soft drinks at convenience stores as well as restricting the amount of salt allowed in food served at restaurants in New York.  Who asked him to be the Jewish grandmother?  It’s pretty much accepted by most people that once we become adults, we are free to pursue whatever happens to amuse us…to excess or otherwise.  If we want to eat a block of cheese the size of a car battery and wash that down with enough booze to turn our liver into a solid, that should be our business.  Frankly, if they want to regulate things for the good of people, they should control Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, both of which are far worse for the human condition.

The roots of this nanny-ism increasingly encroaching upon our adult lives may spring from the compulsion we have developed in modern western society to protect our children like Faberge eggs at every step of their lives.  Everything is done to shield the young ‘uns from any and all harmful activities.   Much of what passes as sports at the juvenile level these days is essentially paddy cake with uniforms.  This is all misguided and runs counter to the natural pull of evolution. Kids, especially boys, want to do dangerous and competitive things, it’s in the wiring of the genes.  Today’s children are way too restricted on their fun activities.  From the dawn of time, kids have always found novel ways to amuse themselves.  There’s a good chance that young Grog ate a bug or tried to grab a hot smoldering rock simply to amuse his cave-boy pals. Ever since then, kids have found innumerate ways to amuse themselves whether by setting explosions, jumping off high ledges, chasing wild animals or dating dangerous girls.  So now, they’re worried about kids eating spicy foods?  How wimpy are we?

Recently, we wrote about the so called sport of “longboarding” in which kids rode supine on long skateboards down steep public streets while dodging oncoming cars.   People actually wanted to regulate this.  I say let ’em do what they want.  If we don’t allow Darwin to cull the herd, we wind up with a society full of idiots which then necessitates more dumb laws.  Embracing risky behaviour will lead to some undesirable results certainly.  In the extreme case, some hospital bills or maybe the odd death.  The entrepreneurial ones achieve fame by making movies in the “Jackass” genre which are essentially chronicles of glorified self inflicted head and genital pain.  Or we wind up at the other end with people like Steve Frayne, the guy who jumped off a space capsule to fall to the earth from the extremes of the earth’s orbit.  We can argue that even Christopher Columbus was a bit of a nutter by sailing off into the unknowns of the world at the time.  The point is, that while risky behaviour is dangerous, it is probably a manifestation of man’s desire to improve his condition.  We don’t know what we can achieve unless we try it, or find someone crazy enough to try it.  Think of the guy who first stuck his hunt of the day into the fire and created cooked meat.  Think of the guy who ate the first raw oyster.

It’s a bit of a stretch to equate eating spicy chips to discovering America, but we can’t stifle the urge to take chances and to chase thrills.  The only legitimate way to make it through the natural path to adulthood is to get a few bumps and bruises along the way.  What kid hasn’t stuck their finger in an electrical socket.  You’ll notice there are no laws prohibiting this activity.  Of course, odds are, we’re going to lose a few along the way, but that’s nature.  History glorifies the guys who took chances and achieved things, not the guys who stood around wagging fingers and making laws telling people what to not do.   As well, most societies have their own mechanism to sort out the dumb and stupid; it’s called shame and ridicule. That’s a lot more effective than stupid laws.

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.