Nofunland: Halloween Costumes

Here is another in a series of posts documenting the transformation of America into Nofunland. This week’s episode: Halloween.

A high school pricipal on Long Island has banned Halloween costumes because he feels they disrupt school.

Long Beach High School Principal Nicholas Restivo, who sent the three seniors home to change last year, said the episode solidified his sense that the school’s costume tradition was disruptive.

Personally, if your parents let you wear it, you aren’t naked, and aren’t carrying dangerous weapons, who cares?

I See Dead People

A pre-Halloween poll done by the AP and Ipsos revealed that nearly a third of Americans believe in ghosts, 23 percent have seen a ghost, 19 percent belive in witchcraft, and 48 percent believe in ESP. Oh, and 14 percent say they have seen a UFO.

We laugh at these people for believing in this ‘crazy’ stuff, yet some 90 plus percent of Americans believe in a god. Now who is crazy? You can probably find as much evidence that a UFO crashed in Roswell, New Mexico as you can the existance of a god.

Nofunland

First in a semi-regular series.

Nofunland is a term I came up with to describe the general atmosphere of America (but can be found in many other countries as well). In America we seem to be on a constant quest to take the fun out of living.
Periodically I will be posting examples of life in Nofunland. Today I start with this case-in-point:

Woman cited for cursing at toilet

A Pennsylvania woman found that her toilet had stopped up and water was overflowing and leaking downstairs into the kitchen of her home. Understandably, she was upset and began yelling and cursing at her toilet near an open window. Her neighbor, a police officer, upset by the noise, called the police.

Now, we do not know the exact details of why the neighbor felt it necessary to call the cops, but we do know that the woman was cited for disorderly conduct which has a maximum sentence of 90 days in jail and a $500 fine. We also know that she was inside her home and not drunk. Where does disorderly conduct come into play? No where. We simply have an instance of a police officer (who was off-duty) overstepping his authority and using his position to get what he wants, and being supported by other police officers that should know better. Seems like there is a lot of that these days.

Social Security Reform

The Bush administration has just released a report saying that in order to save Social Security we will either have to increase taxes or cut benefits. There is no other way, and we have to do it now.

There is nothing new in these findings. We have known all this for decades. My problem is with the Bush administration telling me this. An administration that is gung-ho on privatizing. My problem is that a President that has wasted over a half trillion dollars on a preemptive war based on false information, and that has directly caused thousands of preemptive deaths, is telling me that we don’t have enough money for something. It just sounds ridiculous.

Now, I understand that we really don’t have the money. Especially now, thanks to a liberally spending President and his conservative cohorts. The people who have hated Social Security since its inception and want to get rid of it because they can’t stand the idea of someone, who is not them, getting a goddamn penny of their money. At least in the Democratic ideology, America is still a society, and society is best when moved forward together. The conservative notion of society is 300 million little islands fighting the best they can to get what they can, which is Darwinian in nature, but this is a party that believes in creation so I guess we should call it, “God wants you to suffer, except of course if you’re rich, and that’s the very essence of the drive to become rich, so become rich and you won’t suffer.” I’m sure most would simply put it, “You’re on your own.”

I just want to say that I’m no Democrat apologist. Both ideologies are flawed, and I believe there should be a return on our nation’s investment. But I do think there should be an investment.

If the move toward reform were just simply to correct the problem, I could probably get behind it, but there is so much money to be made by companies if privatization were to happen, that it makes me opposed to such a move. It is really a cash cow to financial companies it’s not even funny. It makes me kind of angry at the notion that there would be people who become rich because of privatization, while people’s benefits shrink because of service fees and the like. We already know how much interest we don’t get from our bank accounts.

Traffic Guru

Thanks to Tom Allen, host of the CBC Radio 2 program Music and Company, I learned the name of the man who designs demarcation-less traffic systems. The man’s name is Hans Monderman.

His most famous approach has been labelled designing for negotiation, which he openly admits works better in some places than others. At busy urban intersections with slow traffic, he has found that it is often safer and more effective to get road users to focus on looking at one another instead of traffic control devices. Rather than crosswalks, signs, lights, etc., he designs the road to make it easier for users to see and negotiate with one another. His goal is to enhance the visibility and predictability of users, empowering them to cooperate with each another.

I want to thank Tom for answering my e-mail.

Life Without Street Signs?

I was listening to CBC Radio 2 the other morning (yes, I’m craving some classical music) when the announcer talked about towns in Europe and the UK removing their street signs and other demarcations. I found this very interesting. Apparently, traffic accidents are lower as a result. Drivers were more aware of their surroundings and took better care to watch for other traffic. Average driving speeds were also lower.

Now I doubt this could work in major cities (or any place in the US), but it is an awfully good notion. Imagine, people actually watching where they are going. Boggles the mind doesn’t it?

If anyone knows of this program, please leave me a comment. I would like to look into this further.