9. Farting is socially unacceptable. In Roald Dahl’s the BFG,
the titular Giant comments that it makes no sense to be proud of burping and
embarrassed of farting. After all, farting is inevitable, while burping can be
avoided. And yes, we generally frown on a big gross belch in “polite” company.
But farting is always considered worse than burping. Why, exactly?
8. Red and green or amber and green are the best colors for
stop lights and power indicators. My husband is color blind. If a traffic light
is sideways, he can’t tell the difference between a red and a green light. He
also can’t tell when his Kindle is being charged or is finished being charged
(amber/green). I find it highly ironic that a disability that affects more men
than women is not catered to in our traffic light system, especially since it
was men who designed the system in the first place!
7. We swear on the Bible in court. OK, maybe a long time ago,
this had some weight or validity. But nowadays who really takes the Bible
seriously? In a culture where fewer and fewer people attend church regularly,
how is swearing on an ancient book going to make perjury less likely?
6. Children are innocent and pure. While children are ignorant,
they are hardly innocent! Any parent knows that a child as young as 2 can
manipulate, lie, and exploit loopholes. This doesn’t make children evil at all.
But children are inherently selfish and lack empathy, making them terrible
examples of purity and holiness, despite what many people like to believe.
5. We put kids in swim diapers. This is actually hilarious to
me. My daughter’s swim suit bottoms were, by themselves, tight enough to
“catch” any poop she might have expelled. As for urine, swim diapers are not
absorbent. They literally exist only to give the illusion that a child in a
pool is not randomly spicing it up with urine.
4. It’s not OK to eat every kind of animal. I’m not talking about
kosher laws. I’m talking about the aversion in the US to eating horses, cats,
and dogs. What’s the big deal? Meat is meat. How is a horse different from a
cow or a deer? How is a dog different from a pig?
3. Money has value. Sure, the US has a large stockpile of gold
and precious metals, but our currency isn’t linked to that. Money is valuable
only because all of us take the government’s word for it. We’ve all agreed that
society works better when we have some random token to facilitate the exchange
of goods and services. But money has no intrinsic value.
2. Bodies need to be embalmed and encased in expensive wood and
concrete coffins. It’s nice that we can embalm people. When my grandmother
died, it took us 3 weeks to get everyone assembled for her funeral, and
embalming was the blessing that allowed that to happen. But since when is that
necessary for every single corpse? And why do we buy super expensive wooden
caskets then bury them? Of course, it makes money for the funeral home, but
what if we could just rent the casket for the funeral, then bury the body in a
shroud?
1. War has rules. I understand the point of the Geneva
Convention and other rules of war. But it is inherently absurd that an
enterprise which has as its goal the domination of one group over another by
means of deadly force, has rules governing the use of that force. How
ridiculous that first you shoot down a ship, trying to destroy it and kill all
the sailors on it, but once the ship starts sinking, you suddenly now are
obligated to save the lives of those same sailors, even if just to keep them as
prisoners of war.
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