Sunday, October 26, 2008

I blame bicycle helmets...

Obviously we have taken Darwin out of the equation in modern Western society; people who would have normally drowned themselves in five gallon buckets of Drano left open on the living room floor are instead surviving to adulthood and voting for Barack Obama.

Until Gaia evolves us a twenty-foot-long flying predator to bring the dimwit population back into check, it's nice to see that the gene pool occasionally finds ways to self-chlorinate.

12 comments:

Brad K. said...

Tam, I think you are looking at the story from the wrong light. We should be contributing to research into teaching or enabling people to see electricity, so that we could tell by looking whether the copper wire we intend to scavenge has been disconnected.

That way pirates and scum that will disable a home or a neighborhood for their own gain wouldn't be suffering from their mistakes.

I think the dude's parents should be charged with criminal mischief for failing to teach him character.

Anonymous said...

I blame trial lawyers who insist on putting direction on a bottle of shampoo. For it you can not figure out how; Wet,lather, rinse and repeat if needed, then you should not be breathing my air.

Army of Dad said...

Well he was probably a felon and couldn't legally vote anyway.

Oh and I don't think ACORN was very active in OK so he wouldn't have been able to vote.

dave said...

...and here I was wondering how I'd attracted the attention of a botnet.

Tamalanche!

Anonymous said...

Here in Minnesnowta at least 4 houses have blown up in the past month because people are stealing the copper pipes from the natural gas supply in the houses.

Unfortunately, the houses have all been vacant at the time, and we can't claim that the average intelligence of the human species has gone up by that minute fraction.

Be a durned shame if a copper natural-gas-pipe-thief just happened to light up his crack vial after disconnecting his spoils, wouldn't it?

Anonymous said...

Darwinianism isn't just a science anymore, it's a religious movement that regularly consecrates sacrifices to the living God! AMEN (& kick up that amperage, matey!)

Anonymous said...

Almost exactly the same thing happened yesterday in Miami, with a man trying to steal copper wire from some sort of storage yard.

The legal fuzziness is not quite irrational. If a 'reasonable person' (obviously not the case here) would not realize that the wires were carrying live electricity (for instance,if the building had been abandoned a considerable time ago, and one could presume the power had been cut off), then the person or entity who should have kept warnings posted or should have have had the power turned off could be held responsible.

However, since in this case it sounds like that was not the case, it's probably just a bureaucracy moving at a bureaucratic pace to produce an obvious result.

Anonymous said...

Buy any brand of granola cereal bar or candy bar. On it, you are likely to find instructions for opening the wrapper and enjoying the confection inside.

This is of course pointless, as anyone stupid enough to need directions on how to open a granola bar wrapper is too stupid to comprehend the instructions he's given.

gvi

Larry said...

"The legal fuzziness is not quite irrational. If a 'reasonable person' (obviously not the case here) would not realize that the wires were carrying live electricity (for instance,if the building had been abandoned a considerable time ago, and one could presume the power had been cut off), then the person or entity who should have kept warnings posted or should have have had the power turned off could be held responsible."
How about this instead. Reasonable people should know when something is not theirs, and leave it alone.
Just like your momma (shoulda) taught you.

rremington said...

Safety Laws: allowing the Stupid amongst us to breed.

Rick

Anonymous said...

Funny thing. While you and Caleb were upstairs last evening, we downstairs had a brief discussion on the idea that safeties on dangerous objects (in this case, guns, but it applies more broadly), might actually contribute to accidents or unintentional ouchies. The phrase that started it was, "No safety except your brain."

I've often thought that any injury taken during the commission of a crime should be greeted with "You should put some ice on that." And if the injured party should attempt to collect some recompense, he should be slapped down but good and with prejudice.

But, as they say, that makes too much sense.

M

Anonymous said...

Kishnevi: "If a 'reasonable person' (obviously not the case here) would not realize that the wires were carrying live electricity..."

Apart from the very good and important point tat Larry makes, I would point out that a "reasonable person" intent on fooling around with any sort of electrical conductor will include a volt meter as essential element in his kit. I know it works: I'm still alive after over thirty-one years of doing this stuff.

This person was pre-cognitive. He's out of the pool.