Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Personal Responsibility
We had a tornado come through our northern suburbs this weekend. Tragically, a 10 year old girl was killed when a section of the house she was at collapsed. But now, all hell is breaking loose. Right away, the finger pointing started, accusing the authorities, both local, and the National Weather Service, of not sounding the sirens soon enough. What idiocy. First off, what ever happened to the quant notion of being responsible for your own safety? Second, those sirens are under the control of local authorities, and are designed to warn people who are OUTSIDE, either in parks, or in their yards, that something is happening, and they'd best get INSIDE and get information. They ARE NOT designed to warn people inside buildings. The better thing to do, is to buy a weather alarm radio, and USE IT!! They're anywhere from 50 to 100 dollars, but are worth it. They automatically come on when threatening weather approaches your area, and gives you updates as to what's happening. People think nothing of buying smoke alarms for their houses, yet balk at the idea of buying one of these things. But think about it. How many times a year would you use a smoke alarm? Now, how many times a year would you use a radio like this? Especially here in the Midwest. A lot more, I'll wager.
I think a bigger issue here is the desire of people to blame something, or someone when a tragedy like this happens. We seem to need to finger someone for screwing up when things like this happen, and thing string the poor bastard/bastardess up from a local tree. (After suing the crap out of them first, of course.) But this is life, folks. People die, and lives are changed. Every once in a while Nature decides to show us who holds the trump cards. (She does, by the way, in case you hadn't figured that out by now.) There are no pat answers sometimes. You can wail "why, why???" all you want but that's life folks. Sometimes good people die during bad storms.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ..."
Isaac Asimov
I think a bigger issue here is the desire of people to blame something, or someone when a tragedy like this happens. We seem to need to finger someone for screwing up when things like this happen, and thing string the poor bastard/bastardess up from a local tree. (After suing the crap out of them first, of course.) But this is life, folks. People die, and lives are changed. Every once in a while Nature decides to show us who holds the trump cards. (She does, by the way, in case you hadn't figured that out by now.) There are no pat answers sometimes. You can wail "why, why???" all you want but that's life folks. Sometimes good people die during bad storms.
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ..."
Isaac Asimov
