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National Park Service Says Tech Is Enabling Stupidity
theodp writes "The National Park Service is finding technology to be a double-edged sword. While new technologies can and do save lives, the NPS is also finding that unseasoned hikers and campers are now boldly going where they never would have gone before, counting on cellphones, GPS, and SPOT devices to bail them out if they get into trouble. Last fall, a group of hikers in the Grand Canyon called in rescue helicopters three times by pressing the emergency button on their satellite location device. When rangers arrived the second time, the hikers complained that their water supply tasted salty. 'Because of having that electronic device, people have an expectation that they can do something stupid and be rescued,' said a spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park. 'Every once in a while we get a call from someone who has gone to the top of a peak, the weather has turned and they are confused about how to get down and they want someone to personally escort them. The answer is that you are up there for the night.'"
I blame the net for increasing the number of perverts too! Certainly it's created more pedophiles than there ever were before. I know it's made more criminals, just look at all the people getting ripped off now!
...world's gone to hell with all this technology. It wasn't like this back in the good ol' day.
Well, yes. It does.
Yes, yes they do. But as long as they are wasting time with stupid crap like going after Roger Clemens, maybe they could spare a couple of hours and get some real governing done. Maybe that's asking too much.
wow .. you could actually be the worst person I've even come across on the Internet ... and I've spent a lot of time here.
'grats to you.
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
Both you and smidget are idiots. Obama is trying to get a bill through Congress right now in which he wants to pay all mortgages.
The rest of his agenda? Health care. Let the government take care of it. Businesses make mistakes? Government takes them over for any reason they want and with no accountability as the SEC will not even honor FOIA requests. Don't believe it? It's in Obama's last bill that was supposed to make sure no stock market crashes will ever happen again.
Obama to Joe the Plumber: Hey, I'm just here to redistribute the wealth If you're good enough at business to make yourself pretty comfortable, we, the government, are going to take the fruits of your labor until you don't have anything more than the guy who doesn't want to work as hard as you do, or hasn't sacrificed years of his life to get an education and and isn't paying through the nose for that education. We're going to reward him for his choices and punish you for making good choices. We're going to take your money and give it him....
As far as the government giving money to businesses.... That's your buddy Obama making sure of his power base. He's the one giving trillions of dollars to business. He's also the one spending us into oblivion. He's spent more money in less than 2 years than all previous US presidents combined.
He's already put us into a financial hole that will take decades for us to pay off. Our kids and grandkids will be paying off the interest and principle on what he's spent already. I find it incredibly selfish of you guys that you care so little for those who will come after us. I also find it incredibly naive of you guys not to recognize that the US became the wealthiest and most powerful nation the earth, with the highest standard of living ever realized in the history of the world, without a nanny state and without entitlements. It's only as we have become a welfare state that we have begun declining in military and political power, political will and economic/financial resources. We're now well on the way to bankruptcy, and 50 years ago we, as a nation, were so well-off financially that it was impossible to think of us ever going broke. Well, we're at that point right now, and entitlements are the leading cause. Entitlements make up 56% of government spending.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville