Jack Heald

This post comes under the heading of “Not Exactly Scientific but Darned-Reliable Nonetheless”.

I was driving home the other day amidst the normal horrors of the southbound 101 at rush hour, and was irritated to see that traffic was stalled and slowed much farther along my route than normal. As I approached my exit, I saw the reason.

On the side of the road was a single traffic cop with his pretty blue and red flashing lights, and a single driver receiving a citation from said cop. As soon as traffic got past the cop by the side of the road, the traffic jam ceased and I was able to resume normal highway speeds.

Ordinarily, I would have forgotten this incident as it doesn’t seem particularly meaningful. We’ve all cursed the stupidity of people who seem to insist on slowing down to look at something on the side of the road, and this experience was no different. But the next day something happened that put the incident in a whole new light.

The next day I drove home the same time, same route, but traffic was moving at normal highway speeds the whole trip. At almost precisely the same point near my exit, I saw a car stalled on the side of the road. The only difference between this day’s trip and the previous day’s is that there was no cop with pretty flashing lights next to the stalled car.

And suddenly it hit me: cops cause traffic jams.

I’ve since noticed that this is almost ALWAYS the cause of traffic jams: whenever traffic on my commute is clogged up, the source of the bottleneck is almost always a cop on the side of the road writing a traffic tickets. I challenge you to start observing whether or not this is true in your community as well.

I hate traffic jams, especially unnecessary ones, and have been pondering the problem for years. I’ve always blamed the general stupidity of the populace for most traffic jams, but this observation has changed my opinion. Rather than condemn the populace for slowing down in the presence of flashing red and blue lights, why not just accept such behavior as a given in human behavior, and figure out a way to manage around it? And the way to manage around it is simple: prohibit the police from stopping anyone for traffic violations during rush hour.

I have proof-positive that if the cops would leave us alone to manage ourselves, we’d do just fine. (I know cops don’t believe this, but cops don’t believe anything.)

I propose that the cops stay off the road altogether during rush hour, and only show up in the event of a traffic accident. I’m sure some faint-hearted limp-wristed milqutoast will protest that the presence of traffic cops keep us safer, but my experience says otherwise. My experience says that the presence of cops – especially with their flashing lights – is the cause of the type of traffic snarl-ups which inevitably lead to multiple car rear-end collisions. I’d be willing to bet that those are the main sort of traffic accident that occurs during rush hour.

Want to have a faster, safer commute?

Get rid of the traffic cops.

Earth Day. Bleh.

I’m convinced Earth Day was conceived by tea-sipping western European elites who live in mild climates where nature is a devoted, loving and fertile servant to man. I know better. I spent my childhood in Oklahoma and half my adult life in Texas.

Oklahoma springtime meant tornadoes, thunderstorms, wicked unexpected heatwaves, late snowstorms and crop-crushing hail storms. Summer brought drought, searing heat, blowing dust and energy-sapping humidity. Fall was an explosion of allergens to make up for the relatively mild weather. Winter was tree-crushing ice storms. The ground was 90% limestone, so growing anything required dedication, hard work, sweat, perseverance and more than a bit of luck. We had poisonous snakes and venomous and/or biting bugs. In one 18 month stretch, my hometown of 35000 people suffered a devastating direct hit by a tornado and two “100 Year” floods. In other words, “Mother Nature” was mean, nasty, ill-tempered and downright murderous most all the time.

Texas was like Oklahoma only more so. Literally everything in nature was trying to kill you. The weather was tornadoes, hailstorms, thunderstorms, lightning storms, floods, droughts, high winds, searing heat, deadly cold, wicked temperature changes, (I clearly remember a day that had an early afternoon high in the 80s and a late afternoon reading in the 30s), and suffocating humidity. The ground was either caliche clay, which is impossible to till, or rocks. The array of venomous reptiles and bugs, dangerous animals and poisonous plants was exceeded only by the variety of airborne allergens. Literally everything about Mother Nature in Texas was hostile to human life. She was not man’s willing servant; she was a rabid, foam-mouthed, blood-toothed, sharp-clawed maniacal destroyer.

I lived in London for 15 months in 2001-2002. No bugs to speak of. No venomous critters. No poisonous plants. Mild weather year-round, (with a few exceptions). The ground is so fertile it is ridiculous. You could spit a watermelon seed out the back door and be harvesting watermelons 2 months later. Mother Nature, in SW England, was a compliant, willing and fecund servant to mankind. I understand most of France is the same way or better.

I came away from my sojourn in England convinced that the “Save the Earth” people had never lived in Texas or Oklahoma. I knew from experience that Mother Earth didn’t need to be cared for; she needed to be tamed, broken, collared and caged. She is a saber-toothed tiger, eager to shed man’s blood and blissfully indifferent to the consequences of her actions.

I’m nearly certain that the “Earth-First-ers” never spent weeks on end digging ton after ton of limestone from their vegetable garden. I’m pretty sure they never cowered in a “fraidy hole” hoping the tornado blowing over didn’t kill them. I’ll bet they never spent miserable weeks covered in Calomine lotion because they got a rash from poison oak, poison ivy or poison sumac all up and down their arms, legs, trunk and face. I’ll bet they never itched a night away because they were covered in chigger bites or fire ant bites from walking through the grass. I’ll bet they never had a pasture ruined and livestock killed by an invasion of fire ants. I’ll bet they never suffered through a drought that was broken by a flood, or an unrelenting rainy season broken by a drought. I’ll bet they never sat in the emergency room with a friend whose four-year-old son suffered a rattlesnake bite and prayed he wouldn’t lose his leg. I’ll bet they never dreaded fall and spring knowing that the effluvium from all the budding Texas junipers was going to make them sick for weeks. I’ll bet they never struggled season after season to get something – anything – besides weeds to grow in the dreadful soil. I’ll bet they never worried being bitten by a water moccassin while swimming in a local pond. I’ll bet they never chopped their beloved prize pecan trees into firewood because an ice storm had sheared off it’s 100-year-old limbs. I’ll bet they never tried to scrub the iron stains from their clothes – iron stains that came from the red dirt which wouldn’t grow anything useful.

From the time I started school until I was in college, Time Magazine ran cover story after cover story warning the world of an impending Global Ice Age. “The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, amidst a building alarm about the dangers of a new ice age.” All the scientists agreed; it was coming and it was going to be bad. Then sometime in the 80′s “they” decided that Global Warming was the threat du jour. Recently, that has been changed yet again to “Global Climate Change”, (does that phrase have any meaning at all?) In my lifetime, the experts have wrongly predicted every sort of change possible to the environment. Forgive me for being skeptical now.

The “global warming/climate change” scientists have proven to be liars and frauds. Most so-called green technology actually consumes as much fossil fuel and/or creates as much pollution as the technology it is supposed to replace. Recycling waste is an expensive fools’ errand.

My experience is that nature is a rampaging killer, beating on the barricaded doors, jiggling the latches of the windows and probing every crack and crevice of the walls we have built to keep her out and keep us safe. The bulk of my life has been spent battling nature, not caring for it. The logical, natural extension of the philosophy espoused by the “Save the Earth” crowd is that man is a blight on nature and the best thing we could do for Mother Earth is to commit mass suicide.

Earth Day is a sad, sick, stupid joke played on the gullible, the forgetful and the guilt-ravaged. It helps nothing, it wastes time and it diverts our attention from real, solvable problems – like artificial turf and the designated hitter rule. (I contend that the world started going to hell with the advent of both.)