Attack of the Do Gooders

I was really on a rant yesterday about all the do gooders trying to save me all of the environmental contamination that is dooming me to a short life of deformity and crippling illness. I am so tired of all these people who find links between things were there really are not any established links, and then making us change our lives due to these mythical problems.

We got in a rousing debate at lunch, which really wasn’t a debate at all. It was me against 6 other guys, who were all looking at me like I had sprouted a third eye or another arm. You know, it isn’t like I’m trying to argue that there are aliens (which, while I believe there is a strong statistical probability of, I’m not so convinced that they are flying around our neck of the woods) or that there is some grand conspiracy regarding the Knights Templar, the Free Masons and the assassinations of JFK and MLK.

As a side note, remind me to talk some time about my theory of people who have three letter abbreviations of their names ending in K and untimely deaths. But any way, back to the tirade…

And before getting back to our regularly scheduled programming, have you ever notice how there is so much cynicism in today’s society, but not enough skepticism? Why can we be so cynical about the ways of our world, but we’re so ready to believe just about any crap that any do gooder wants to foist on us? We’re so ready to believe that there are these grand conspiracies, but as soon as you ask someone to prove it to you, all of a sudden you’re the crazy assed heretic that people are giving a wide birth to. Just WTF is up with that?

Ok, the first issue that got me going is this theory that playgrounds that are made of pressure treated wood are leaching arsenic into the ground and poisoning our kids. Maybe you haven’t heard of this one, but it’s near and dear to my heart. Every one of the elementary schools in our district had playgrounds that were made of pressure treated wood. Pressure treated wood contains arsenic in it. How much, I really don’t care. But, the do gooder’s theory here is that the arsenic leaches out of the wood into the ground, and kids come into contact with the ground (like we needed a government study to figure that out), so ip-so-facto the kids can get arsenic poisoning.

Now, nobody, and I mean nobody in the great state of New York (pre-Spitzer days, so it was still the Great State of NY, rather than the Great State of Over Priced Hookers and Whoring Governors that we live in today) could find where this had actually happened, of course. But nooooo, because a bunch of over caffeinated soccer moms with too much time on their hands and not enough brain power to control themselves got a hold of the issue and decided to turn into the latest and greatest cause de jour of do gooders, our school district yanked out all of the playgrounds.

The real beauty of the situation arose when the school district, which is always cowed and brow beaten by these namby pambies, turns around and says “Ok, we’ve removed the playgrounds, but we don’t have any money for new ones. So if you want new ones, you’ll have to raise the money and install them yourselves.” Which the PTSA happily ran out and did.

Personally, and this is from experience, I’m not really sure what is more dangerous to our children, pressure treated playgrounds which may or may not be posining our kids, or metal playgrounds built by moms and dad on the weekends, who don’t have any construction experience, and are drinking as they're building this shit. It’s a little know fact (but true) that more kids have been hurt on the new playground (my son is one, a compound fracture of his right arm) than were ever poisoned by the freaking arsenic. But that doesn't matter, becuase those do gooders are sleeping well at night, knowing that they saved the day. Idiots.

One of the other issues that I’m not all on board with is this whole thing about mercury in eyeliner poisoning woman. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look it up on the web. It’s gone so far that Minnesota, firmly in the grip of do-gooders, has banned the sale of eyeliner with mercury in it.

I understand mercury is bad. Bad, bad, mercury. Got it. What I don’t understand is if you haven’t proven (at all) the linkage between eyeliner with mercury and any sickness or disease, why the hell are we banning it? My conservative estimate is that there is somewhere along the line of 13 billion applications of eyeliner in the US alone on an annual basis (300 million people, 50% of which are women, 1/3 of those women (50 million) put on eyeliner once a day, 5 days a week). So, over the last 50 years that eyeliner has been around (I have no idea on that one), there was been something like 650 billion applications of eyeliner in the US.

So, that’s a lot of exposure, right? Almost as much as tobacco, right? So with all that use, why the hell haven’t we seen some sort of linkage between the use of eyeliner with mercury in it and some specific disease? Because there isn’t any. But, have no fear, the do gooders are here to protect us.

The last issue is I’m not buying into is in this article:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1722266,00.html

You know, I got that BPA may or may not be bad. I understand that the bottles may actually release BPA, although, how much, I’m not really sure. So that’s like mixing kind of / sort of with possibly / maybe, which, honestly, I think makes Vegas odds look really, really good.

So, you have one study by one guy, and now there’s all this alarm, when a lot of other people say it’s ok. But, because we live in a society of cynics and not skeptics, everyone is buying in all the way on this issue, but no one is stopping to say “prove it”. I would like to see this claim submitted to the same rigorous FDA testing that new drugs have to go through. I think it’s just a bunch of hog wash, but, who I am, right?

So, there you have it. My three crack pot theories that put me on the lunatic fringe. Maybe it’s just time to stop fighting and go back to using wax cartons and believing in aliens. Maybe that way I can fit in with the hip and cool green crowed.

Fuck that shit.

So, in closing, have a great weekend, increase your carbon foot print, drink a lot, drive fast, and we’ll probably all see each other on Monday.

With love,

Your cranky, skeptical, over the hill white guy from the suburbs.