{"id":6224,"date":"2010-01-16T21:03:26","date_gmt":"2010-01-17T05:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=6224"},"modified":"2010-01-16T21:06:21","modified_gmt":"2010-01-17T05:06:21","slug":"the-new-pests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=6224","title":{"rendered":"The new pests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mr. Crankypants just came back from a stroll through downtown San Mateo, where, to his surprise, he saw a few smokers standing outside a bar. You hardly ever see smokers any more, and now that they are a strictly controlled species, Mr. Crankypants feels an odd sort of affection for them, especially when they are out standing in a drizzle. Remember when smokers used to blow smoke right in your face? Only those of us who are middle-aged, or who are from South Carolina, have seen people blowing smoke in the faces of others and getting away with it.<\/p>\n<p>The aggressive smokers who used to blow smoke smoke in your face have been controlled, but now another invasive pest comes along to fill that ecological niche &#8212; the oblivious cell phone user. The National Safety Council says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/USA\/2010\/0112\/Report-Cell-phone-distraction-causes-one-in-four-US-car-crashes\">oblivious cell phone users cause at least 1.6 million traffic accidents a year<\/a>, but Mr. Crankypants is talking about something less deadly. He is talking about the stupid man talking loudly on a cell phone while standing right in front of the potato chips who does not move. He is talking about the stupid woman pushing a stroller while mumbling into a cell phone and dragging a toddler (faster than the toddler can comfortably walk) who almost hits a passerby in the shins with the toddler. He is talking about the stupid man riding a bicycle while talking on a cell phone who blows through a stop sign, swerves around a car that stopped just in time, almost picks off a pedestrian in a crosswalk, and blithely keep on peddling and talking.<\/p>\n<p>Like you, Mr. Crankypants is, of course, perfect, and never talks on his cell phone when he is walking on a crowded sidewalk, or while the cashier is totaling up his groceries, or while he is picking up his dog&#8217;s poop, or when he is in a one-on-one meeting with someone. A good long-term solution for the oblivious cell phone users is neutering; that will eventually put an end to their species (that, and traffic fatalities), but in the mean time Mr. C. is uncertain how to control these noxious pests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mr. Crankypants just came back from a stroll through downtown San Mateo, where, to his surprise, he saw a few smokers standing outside a bar. You hardly ever see smokers any more, and now that they are a strictly controlled species, Mr. Crankypants feels an odd sort of affection for them, especially when they are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6224"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6229,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6224\/revisions\/6229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}