This page written circa 4 July, 1999.
This is not your ordinary parking sign. Who would want to forbid
parking except during business hours? Some idiotic beaurocrat, of course.
Typical American mentality, Andrew would comment, try to legislate
everything. He would be right too. In the last election California passed
a law forbidding the slaughter of horses for human consumption, or something
similar, in response to a bunch of film-stars-turned-animal-rights loonies.
That might make sense if more than about six horses a year (compared to
countless tens of thousands of cows) were in the habit of being eaten,
and if you accept that horses are higher up the food chain than cows.
The bill probably got passed because the rebuttal consisted basically of
someone pointing out what a waste of time it all was, whereas the
sales pitch was an emotional plea so filled with hyperbole that the
total absence of any factual considerations escaped the vast masses.
This being the Fourth of July, fireworks are on sale... in almost every
parking lot in town.
They are in parking lots, in identical, wood-and-wire stalls, surrounded
by some mandatory distance of roped-off open ground, for what we presume
to be safety regulation reasons. If there were any decently exciting
fireworks it would all make sense, but (more) regulations prevent
all rockets, flying fireworks, bungers (even the 3mm x 20mm tiddlers),
Roman candles, etc., etc. As the lady in one of these plywood bunkers
commented: "Nothing fun, sorry. It's all `sane and safe' these days".
Not only sale, but use of such implements of excitement is forbidden. They
go to the length of having a sheet of paper carefully describing
what illegal fireworks look like (so you can recognise them and report anyone
using them). To most sophistocated life forms, this is akin to giving
a child a picture of the chocolates they are not allowed to eat.
"My nephew", added the lady, "could tell you how to turn most of these
back into something dangerous". All this in the land where guns
abound... although something is being done about that... California
has almost passed a bill limiting the purchase of guns to the rate of
one per person per month, we hear.
Sarcasm aside, there is good logic behind some legislation.
I admit that government should be entitled to forbid activity that
significantly depletes state resources, and disabled people represent
a loss of roughly a million dollars to the system. To the
government a person's pleasure is worth less than their taxes, and it
should be so.
The sooner technology advances to the point where the serfs are no longer
worth a million dollars the sooner we will get our fun back.
Double that clock speed, map that genome, lubricate those nanobearings,
and in no time we will not have to go to Kentucky or China for
fireworks, and we will be able to park outside parks even when
they are closed.