Archive for March 9, 2004

I was in a *foul* mood earlier today and ranted a *lot*. I posted two rants, but there were about 3 more that went through my head. I think I must have been PMS’ing.

“Sensitive” people. Like the person in California that recently complained to the state that the designation of Master and Slave on hard drives in computers was offensive so the state issued a decree to all their hardware makers that they had to change the names of the hard drives in their systems in order to be eligible to sell hardware to the state. Puhhh-Leeeze. OK, so here’s the deal. We have a responsibility as a society to learn from our past mistakes. The way you do that is to actually examine the past, in all of it’s gory detail, hold it up to the light, look at it objectively, then say to ourselves “How the hell did we ever think that could be right?” We do *not* sweep words under the rug (especially when they are being used in a fairly proper and applicable setting that has *nothing* to do with the past) and hide from the past. It is in the act of recalling the past and recalling the magnitude of our mistakes that we make sure we don’t do the same thing again.

So, when I was a child, if I said something like this, my parent’s response would have been “Quit being a little crybaby. That’s nothing for you to be upset about, now go play outside”. Why doesn’t society ever do this for the people that obviously weren’t taught by their parents the difference between things that you should truly be upset about and things you shouldn’t?

If I say “I’ve installed a second hard drive in your computer and the two drives are now configured as Primary Master and Primary Slave” and you then allow the words master and slave to cause you to get upset, then understand that A) *you* are responsible for bringing up some troubling association out of context, not me, so don’t get mad at me and B) *you* are being rude to *me* by not paying attention to what I actually *am* telling you, so quit letting your mind wander off to irrelevant stuff and pay attention so I don’t have to repeat this again later.

There are a few things I know to be true:

First, it’s a free country and other people are (suppossed to be) free to use whatever language they want.

Second, the purpose of language is to express ideas between people. When someone says something to you, the important part is the idea, not the language used (which is the reason why it is rude to misassociate things and then come down on the other person just like I wrote above).

Third, many things commonly considered offensive (such as swearing) have a specific purpose in our language. Swearing, for instance, is used to impart a far greater level of emphasis to the idea you are communicating. Some people obviously over use swearing in their daily talk and dilute the emphasis at least in their own usage of the words, while other people *never* swear and have to find a different way of expressing the very emphasis that swear words impart. Whether or not you choose to use those swear words is up to you, but they do have a valid purpose.

Fourth, when someone gets offended, they tend to tune out the rest of the conversation and dwell on whatever offended them.

Given that those things above are true (and you could argue them to some extent, but I think they are more true than not), I must therefore conclude that “sensitivity” in our society is a bad thing. It’s like cutting off your own ears because of something someone else chooses to do. I can understand saying to yourself “Well, I don’t want to talk that way, but it’s their life and they can do what they want” and going on listening to the idea, but once you get offended it becomes very hard to let the idea come on through, and it could be that you miss some fact that could someday save your life. It makes absolutely no sense to me, then, that people in our society would allow themselves to be so sensitive to just the language used in communications instead of the idea being expressed.

All these lawsuits by stupid people for shit that we didn’t do for them really piss me off. For example, the lady that sued McDonald’s over the scalding hot coffee in her lap and won millions. Let’s review a few things. First, she ordered the coffee. Second, she chose to put it between her legs. Third, she was driving a stick shift which meant her legs moved a lot as she worked the clutch and brake. Fourth, anyone over the age of 7 knows that lids on cups come off when you repeatedly bend the cup. Conclusion: What the hell was she doing putting that cup there in the first place? Is she a total moron? Maybe she didn’t have anywhere else convenient to place it… So, because she doesn’t prepare for driving with coffee ahead of time and still orders coffee at a drive through anyway and then makes do with a known bad solution to driving with a cup of coffee and gets hurt as a result, McDonald’s is now responsible? How assinine is that?

So, here’s my solution. We implement a new product rating system in America. It’s called the IQ rating. Each manufacturer can rate their product for the IQ you need to have to use it. If you use their product and hurt yourself, but in the process you exhibit less than the rated IQ in your decision making process, then you can’t sue the product maker. We’ll rate hot coffee at an IQ of 100, and we’ll rate that lady’s use of McDonald’s coffee at a displayed IQ of 40. Case dismissed.

This also means we can change the warning labels on products. Instead of having to warn about things that anyone with an IQ above that of an eggplant should know, we just warn people thusly:

IQ rating: 80

Warning: This product requires that you have a brain, and use it, in order to be safely operated/used/eaten/whatever. If you have left your brain at home or turned it off for some reason, please don’t use our product.

For some reason, I appear to be in a *very* rant oriented state of mind this morning…