This is not social commentary. It’s a simple question.
Iowa is about to get hit by a winter blast tonight – I mean the real deal. It’s gonna get so cold that even real churches are considering closing! The liberal churches close all the time here in Siouxland at the slightest weather provocation. They cancel like SEC area churches. But right now it’s about 2 degrees and wind chills are somewhere around 30 below. By the time our Sunday School hour starts tomorrow morning, the actual temperature is expected to be somewhere around 20 below.
For you limited education and experience folks – that is VERY cold. Think of it this way. Is there much difference between 82 degrees and freezing? Of course there is. Okay. Start at freezing, go down that SAME 50 degrees of difference and that is around 20 below. If you have never experienced it, it is hard to describe. The air feels like it is stabbing your lungs. Exposed skin starts to freeze almost instantly. Will my truck start? Honestly, it’s a good question. My wife’s car in the garage probably will.
So, what prompted all of this? A weather report that went across the screen this morning, warning us about the expected temperatures tomorrow got me wondering about the general intelligence of the American people.
Temperatures in this range could make outdoor activities potentially dangerous.
Really? REALLY? And I was thinking of opening the pool for an early morning swim! I’m glad they gave me this advice.
A few weeks ago I got my third new Samsung, this one a non-exploding Galaxy S7-Edge. With that I got the Gear VR – virtual reality headgear. It’s a lot of fun. But as I opened it up and read the instructions I saw this warning.
Please do not drive while wearing the Samsung Gear VR.
Again, REALLY? It’s a bad idea to drive while wearing a set of goggles that completely block your view? Who knew?
Of course, we live in a world where irons come with warnings telling us not to iron our clothes while we are wearing them. I’ve made some dumb mistakes in my life, I really have. I’ve done some things where afterward my companions and I looked at each other and said, “That was really stupid.” But I’ve never thought about ironing my clothes without first removing them from my corpulent self.
Here is one I thought was a great piece of wisdom.
I was cutting some brush a few weeks ago, and as I started up the chainsaw and I thought to myself, which side should I hold? Should I grab the end with the rounded plastic handles or the side with the sharp, rotating chain that will mangle my body?
It was a tough choice, but I saw the warning label decided against grabbing the sharp end. Thank goodness.
You can google “stupid warning labels” and find them. Some of them are so bizarre and inappropriate I can’t or won’t copy them here. But they have in common the fact that in a world of mildly intelligent people they simply would not be necessary.
Check out this beauty from a jetski users manual. 
When you need to find out how much fuel is in your vehicle, have you ever lit a match and taken a look? Flicked your Bic? With flashlights on just about everything electronic today?
Here’s one that totally baffled me. This is prescription medicine for a dog. It says so right on the bottle. DOG. Big letters. The warning label then says that the effect of the medicine may be intensified by the use of alcohol. I’ve never had a drink in my life, though I don’t share the strict abstentionist interpretation of Scripture, but do people often mix medications with alcohol…for their pets? Is pet alcoholism a big problem anyway?
That is just the beginning of the problem in this label though. It goes on to say that the one taking the medicine should not drive or operate heavy machinery after taking the drug. Does your dog drive? Frankly, if your dog drives, I don’t much care whether he’s taken the medication with alcohol or without it, or not at all. A dog operating a motor vehicle or heavy machinery is an issue unto itself.
This next one saved one of our grandchildren. We were babysitting and needed to bathe the little whippersnapper. I thought, hey, we’ve got a washer and dryer. How easy would that be, quick and efficient. But then I read the warning label.
My grandchild is most definitely a person, so I found a different way to cleanse the little booger. Thank goodness for that warning label. Who knows what might have happened.
When did we get stupid? When did we become a society that needed a warning to do what common sense should command?
When did we become a people who needed warnings not to wear VR goggles while driving or hold the sharp ends of chainsaws? I realize that many of these warnings are simply meant to protect companies from lawsuits, but do Iowans need people telling us that when it’s 20 below you should probably cancel your picnic plans?
Really?
Anyone up for a round of golf after church tomorrow?
One of my favorites was on a lawnmower I bought — Do not change blade while mower is running!
That is true wisdom
I don’t think it’s so much that we’re all that stupid, so much as there are a sufficient number of people who will *do* those stupid things (and who will blame anyone other than themselves for doing them) for the lawyers to justify the warnings.
I’ll be up for that game of snow golf!
I tried my hand at being a pharmacy technician. Part of my job was to type up the instructions for the label. I had to type up a few for suppositories…”Unwrap one suppository, then insert rectally every X hours as needed”. I laughed at first, until my pharmacist explained to me that people are basically stupid. She told me of actual cases where people did not do the “unwrap” part and wondered why the drug was not working. She also told me that the “insert rectally” was also vitally important as other wise they might try to swallow it (I just hope if they did that they at least unwrapped it first). Finally the number and time between uses are both important as otherwise people will think they can take several at once and it will “work faster”. I use to believe in the basic intelligence of humanity…Then I listened to those stories and others like them as a pharmacy tech. Now…my hope is vastly diminished.
I had a drill sergeant who called it CC … Common Cents and everyone was broke.
Common sense = Living where it doesn’t ever get -20°F.
HT: Tommy Ellison
Somebody had to say it out loud. 🙂
It occurs to me that we may be asking the wrong question. In the face of such silly warnings, the question to ask may not be “are we really that stupid?”, but “Do they really think we’re that stupid?”.
The best warning label I saw was for table salt. Warning contains salt.
It’s not a matter of common sense as much as it is a means to alleviate companies from financial culpability. It has a lot to do with the fact that when tragedy happens, people feel a need to blame someone other than themselves, and lawyers are more than happy to accommodate that need for a price of course.
I’m OK with a sober dog operating heavy machinery as long as a cat does not ???
For some reason my smiley face emojis were replaced by question marks in the above.
because emojis are evil.
Yes. Some Americans are unbelievably stupid. They’ll stick a wet dog in the home dryer to dry him off. When the dog turns up dead, they sue Sears for NOT warning them not to stick a living wet dog in the dryer to dry him off. An equally stupid jury will be convinced that this was a tragedy waiting to happen, because Sears cannot image someone being that stupid, and thus didn’t warn them not to stick their wet dog in the dryer. The jury will award this stupid person millions of dollars for their stupidity. Thus stupid warning labels.
But then again, maybe the REAL problem is that Americans (some) are unbelievably greedy and looking for a way to make a fortune by pretending they are stupid.