Skip to main content

Hang up and drive

By
You wanna know who I can't stand? Who really get's my blood boiling? People who text or talk on their cell phones while driving. I mean, the nerve! Is your phone call or text message more important than my safety? Do you know how many people die on the road each day because of people getting distracted by their little electronic toys? I don't know the exact numbers, but it must be, like, a lot people a year. A lot of blood spilled because you are stupid enough to check your incoming text message while driving.

Ugh! Look at you, sitting there at the light that turned green, like, 1.5 seconds ago. 1.5 seconds? Frickin, jeez. This guy!

That said, you know one situation in which I don't mind use of a cell phone while driving? When it's me driving and it's my cell phone. Texting while I'm driving is the exception to the rule I laid out above. When it's my cell phone, it belongs to me and it is therefor far more important than the safety of others. Why? Because when it comes to others, they aren't me! Duh.

To help you in your decision-making, here's a useful flow chart for deciding whether it's okay for an individual to use a cell phone while driving:

Figure 1: You cannot deny this is true.

So unless you'd like to feel the wrath of my horn honking in your general direction, Put. Your. Phone. Down. Now, sir.

And while you're hanging up and driving the way you're supposed to, I'm gonna look away from the road and finish writing this blog post on my cell phone.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A view from your shut down

By
The Daily Dish has been posting reader emails reporting on their " view from the shutdown ." If you think this doesn't affect you, or if you know all too well how bad this is, take a look at the growing collection of poignant stories. No one is in this alone except for the nutjobs in the House. I decided to email Andrew with my own view. I plan to send a similar letter to my congressperson. Dear Andrew, I am a professor of astronomy at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). The CfA houses one of the largest, if not the largest collection of PhD astronomers in the United States, with over 300 professional astronomers and roughly 100 doctoral and predoctoral students on a small campus a few blocks west of Harvard Yard. Under the umbrella of the CfA are about 20 Harvard astronomy professors, and 50 tenure-track Smithsonian researchers. A large fraction of the latter are civil servants currently on furlough and unable to come to work. In total, 147 FTEs...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Long Con

By
Hiding in Plain Sight ESPN has a series of sports documentaries called 30 For 30. One of my favorites is called Broke  which is about how professional athletes often make tens of millions of dollars in their careers yet retire with nothing. One of the major "leaks" turns out to be con artists, who lure athletes into elaborate real estate schemes or business ventures. This naturally raises the question: In a tightly-knit social structure that is a sports team, how can con artists operate so effectively and extensively? The answer is quite simple: very few people taken in by con artists ever tell anyone what happened. Thus, con artists can operate out in the open with little fear of consequences because they are shielded by the collective silence of their victims. I can empathize with this. I've lost money in two different con schemes. One was when I was in college, and I received a phone call that I had won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. All I needed to d...
8 comments
Read more

back-talk begins

By
me: "owen, come here. it's time to get a new diaper" him, sprinting down the hall with no pants on: "forget about it!" he's quoting benny the rabbit, a short-lived sesame street character who happens to be in his favorite "count with me" video. i'm turning my head, trying not to let him see me laugh, because his use and tone with the phrase are so spot-on.
4 comments
Read more