Friday :: 03 July 2009 :: 08:12 PM
175 days to Christmas!
Watch For Deer Crossing
Tonight I was driving with my daughter, and she told me yesterday she had seen a deer cross the road right at a deer crossing sign. You never have your camera at the right time. I told her it reminded me of a news article I had recently read.
It seems a man had recently moved up to our area (Coeur d'Alene, ID) from California. He came from the big city but he loved life here in the country. However, he was concerned about all the deer getting hit by motor vehicles. So he petitioned the commissioners at a county meeting, requesting the removal of the deer crossing signs because he thought the signs gave the animals a false sense of security. He posited that if the signs were removed, we would have fewer accidents with deer.
Fortunately, the papers never publish the names of people like that.
[02 Jan 2007 Update:] While on Christmas holiday visiting relatives in Ohio, I was relating this story. My sister-in-law broke in and said that one of her neighbors (Philo, OH) asked the highway department to remove the deer crossing sign from the front of her yard because she did not want the deer crossing there.
What is scarry about all this is that these people vote!
Random Humor: Tribal Wisdom And Government Policy
Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in civil government they often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:
1. Buying a bigger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this horse."
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Pass legislation declaring that "This horse is not dead."
10. Blaming the horse's parents.
11. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
12. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."
13. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
14. Do a Cost Analysis Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
15. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.
16. Form a quality committee to find uses for dead horses.
17. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
18. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
19. Blame the horse farm on which it was born.
20. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.