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 sunk 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.

Kids and Killer Hot Dogs? 3 Tips to Prevent Choking on Food – On Parenting usnews.com.

Sounds reasonable.  I suppose hot dogs as a dangerous food for kids can rank right up there with such hazards as running with scissors or playing with firecrackers.   The real question is at what age range do the warning labels apply on this newly labelled death food?  Presumably, nobody is stupid enough to feed hot dogs to children until they have teeth, so that would exclude the under 1 year crowd.  At some point, the parents  have to take their eyes off the kid when he’s eating, because if they have to monitor every chew up until they feel it’s safe for junior to eat unsupervised, the parents may want to stay with the pablum or should consider getting the kid tested for IQ deficiency. 

I mean if the kid hasn’t mastered bite, chew, swallow by the age of 10, the odds are high that long division will be a challenge and saving for college is probably unnecessary.   No doubt, upon the heels of this recommendation from the American pediatric group, a veritable phonebook sized list of hazardous foods will be released to worried parents.  In the legal world, this creates another opportunity, because if some ill fate should befall someone’s child resulting from eating food items on this list, well, let’s just say someone’s kids will be going to college.

Has anyone noticed the eerie resemblance that kids these days bear to domesticated pets?  They both live in controlled environments, have regimented food and receive over the top fawning and preening.  Our western society is raising bubble kids, children who live in protected cocoons until some vague time of adulthood when they are allowed to go into the world.  Like domesticated pets though, many of these kids are unable to fend for themselves once out, depending on parents for the most mundane things.  Can you imagine if in nature, birds were not taught to fend for themselves and instead hung around the family nest?  You’d have birds nests the size of trampolines and you certainly wouldn’t park your car under one of those.

It’s very ironic that parents of kids today are themselves the tail end of the baby boom, people who were given lavish attention and nurturing during their time as kids because of the post war mentality of their parents.  This generation was also about drugs, free love, do what feels good yada yada yada, but now themselves are hovering over their own brood like over-bearing  nannies.

Back to the hot dogs;, while we don’t feed food to kids shaped like grapple hooks, to all of a sudden post warning labels on hot dogs after decades of consumption is nannyish in the  extreme.  What are we supposed to eat at ball games? Kibble? All I can say is, if this warning takes hold, lots of ears, snouts and eyelids will go to waste.  I guess there’s always baloney.