Wednesday Afternoon No-Fun Link

…For some the trip will become a nightmare. A number of vacations are ruined by one or more of the following: drugs, alcohol, disorderly behavior, and preventable accidents.

That's the U.S. State Department warning potential spring breakers about the horrors that await them once they deplane. Here's my favorite part:

Because standards of security, safety and supervision are not the same in many countries as they are in the U.S., many young persons have died after automobile accidents, after falls from balconies or into open ditches, by drowning in the ocean as well as in hotel pools, and in water-sports mishaps, among others.

In other words, we can attribute those drownings, balcony tumbles, and ditch deaths to insufficient foreign "standards of security, safety and supervision."

Via To the People.

Comments

[Jennifer]

What are the US safety standards that make the ocean safer?

[David]

Our sharks are now radio-controlled.

[Jennifer]

I suppose you could point out that the nations damaged in the New Year's tsunami generally didn't have much in the way of ocean safety regs.

[Karen]

I think we should simply devote this thread to our spring break plans. Then we can take turns listing all the possible hazards we'll face.

[WLM]

You can't smoke in the ocean in the U.S.

[Rick Barton]

A number of vacations are ruined by one or more of the following: drugs, alcohol, disorderly behavior...

But sex is always a sure fire winner.

[Karen]

Here's something, via Andrew Sullivan, that offers no safety hazards:
http://www.cupclub.co.uk/

Of course, if the empties are from a beer keg, it makes things a lot more interesting.

[brian423]

Did anyone besides me think of The Truman Show when reading this? They try to squelch Jim Carrey's wanderlust by constantly telling him how dangerous it is to travel.

[Brian Courts]

A number of vacations are ruined by one or more of the following: drugs, alcohol, disorderly behavior...

Huh? Was that a typo? They must have meant it to read A number of vacations are ruined by a lack of one or more of the following: drugs, alcohol, disorderly behavior.

[Jaybird]

"water-sports mishaps"

Keeping your mouth closed is a good way to avoid this particular issue.

Er, or so I've heard.

[James Feldman]

I can remember some vacations that were ruined from a lack of drugs, alcohol, and disorderly behavior. Do I get a government pamplet warning me to make sure I don't stay too sober?

[Troy McClure]

I was one of the first to speak out against horseplay.

[Mike]

many young persons have died...after falls from balconies

hmm

[Deus ex Machina]

<offtopic>
The director of Shaft just died.
</offtopic>

[coachacola]

Who the hell would actually take this seriously, especially college students? My guess: zero. I bet the ones who do take it seriously would never party on spring break anyway.

[Scenescent]

They forgot the part where they tell us that when we're abroad we're representing our country, so they want us to be on our best behavior. They still can cancel the spring formal, you know.

[Ira Weatheral]

We teach kids how to make sex safer because we know they're going to have sex, so why don't we teach kids how to do drugs, drink, and fool around safely since they're going to do those things anyway?

[John]

Proper supervision? These people are 18 years old. They are adults. If they are too stupid to know when to stop drinking before alcohol poisoning or not to jump off of balconies, too bad. I hate the way we infantilize the young. It used to be that people began life as adults and started working, living on their own, going to war, ect when they were 18 at the latest. Now, if you are a top self white kid, you apparently need supervision until you are 22 or older. It just drives me nuts.

[Jim Murphy]

Here's something along the same lines...

I wish I was an AMA researcher so I'd have the analytical and quantitative skills to come up with such a profound study. Apparently they've discovered that college girls are more likely to drink and have sex on spring break....they've also taken the controversial position that drinking grain alcohol until you pass out and having sex with random strangers isn't the best idea:

>>
CHICAGO - The American Medical Association is warning girls not to go wild during spring break. All but confirming what goes on in those "Girls Gone Wild" videos, 83 percent of college women and graduates surveyed by the AMA said spring break involves heavier-than-usual drinking, and 74 percent said the break results in increased sexual activity.

[Warren]

John,
Advances in medicine and living standards mean people now routinely live into they're 90's. This elongation of life span is manifest at every stage. 18 year olds are in the final years of childhood and adolescence now typically lasts until mid 30's

[Clark Griswold]

My vacation was almost ruined by one or more of the following: cousin Eddie, aunt Edna and her dog Dinky (may they rest in peace), that dang road that ended in the middle of nowhere, and Wally World being closed. On the other hand the babe in the Ferrari was nice.

[joe]

"A number of vacations are ruined by one or more of the following: drugs, alcohol, disorderly behavior, and preventable accidents."

True, but keep in mind: a number of vacations are enhanced by one or more of the following: drugs, alcohol, disorderly behavior, and preventable accidents.

[R C Dean]

83 percent of college women and graduates surveyed by the AMA said spring break involves heavier-than-usual drinking, and 74 percent said the break results in increased sexual activity.

So what the hell are the rest of them doing?

[guy in the back row]

People might be living until their 90s, but they haven't really been around for years. We're trading huge amounts of tax money for the ability to be lonely, afraid, and confused for another 4 or 5 years.

[Jennifer]

So what the hell are the rest of them doing?

Either posing for the Girls Gone Wild cameras or passing out Jack Chick tracts.

[Mr. F. Le Mur]

Because standards of security, safety and supervision are not the same in many countries as they are in the U.S. ...

When I lived in France I noticed a distinct lack of "No Trespassing" signs/fences, and one was free to wander around picturesque abandonded buildings with rotting floors and collapsing roofs, etc. "Attractive nuisance" is a foreign (American) concept there. They also drive really fast.

It was great.

[Jennifer]

When I lived in France I noticed a distinct lack of "No Trespassing" signs/fences, and one was free to wander around picturesque abandonded buildings with rotting floors and collapsing roofs, etc. "Attractive nuisance" is a foreign (American) concept there.

Even Canada has more sense than we do in that regard. On the Canadian side of Niagara Falls there's this place where you can pay to enter a tunnel someone blasted behind the falls, so that you end up standing behind the falls looking down a short tunnel and watching the water cascade in front of you. There is absolutely no way you could accidentally fall in, but if you are either suicidal or a dumbass you could climb up onto a waist-high ledge, crawl through about ten feet of tunnel and then emerge to be crushed under the weight of the Horseshoe Falls.

If they'd built it in America they would have had to put bars in front of the tunnel to ensure nobody could possibly hurt themselves.

[Steve Wynn]

Clark,

Here's hoping you have better luck in Las Vegas.

[mediageek]

Anything fun has an element of danger.

As far as I'm concerned, the fuckwitted busybodies who wrote this garbage should all be pink-slipped and immediately checked into an asylum with padded rooms and straight jackets, lest they do something that might conceivably result in injury.

Seriously, where do people that write this shit come from? Do they grow them in a vat?

[BigPhil]

MG,

That's you tax dollars at work!

[mediageek]

Yeah. Great.

So instead of being able to put my money to work for, oh, say, me, it gets put to "work" funding press releases written by fun-hating idiots.

Thanks for the reminder, BigPhil.

[J. Goard]

That other 17 percent are probably already attending Florida "universities".

[J. Goard]

mediageek--

What strikes me about most such people I encounter is precisely that they aren't really super-risk-averse. Do they mind their high-schooler playing basketball? Snowboarding (once properly protected against the grave danger of marijuana)? Building houses for Habitat for Humanity? Nope, these are mostly puritans who can't deal with desire in themselves, who get their rocks off on moral superiority. Safety as a motivation is disingenuous.

[linguist]

83 percent of college women and graduates surveyed by the AMA said spring break involves heavier-than-usual drinking, and 74 percent said the break results in increased sexual activity.

So what the hell are the rest of them doing?

Ah, R.C., read between the lines. Obviously, the other 17% of them are drunk sluts before going on spring break!

[John]

J Goard,

The same parents who won't let their 12 year olds play outside alone or ride a bicycle without a helmut will think nothing of buying that same child a 300 horsepower sports car when he or she turns 16. This despite the fact that by far the most likely way your child is going to be killed is driving a car. It is just insanity.

[Larry A]

And they left out one of the scarier possibilities. Down across the border from where I live tourists are simply disappearing.

"Thirty-one Americans have been reported as kidnapped just across the Mexican border. According to U.S. officials, two of them have been confirmed dead, and a dozen have returned home either by paying a ransom or somehow escaping. That means 17 Americans are unaccounted for, somewhere in the Nuevo Laredo area of Mexico -- dead or alive."

America's Most Wanted.

[jbold1]

Spring Break here I...er...come?

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A 22-year-old Californian man who received oral sex from a sixteen-year-old girl should not be forced to register for life as a sex offender, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

The state's top court found that California denied Vincent Hofsheier equal protection under the law because those having intercourse in such circumstances would not be forced to register as lifetime sex offenders.

Hofsheier appealed after being ordered to register his name on the list, which is shared with the public and carries significant stigma.

"Requiring mandatory lifetime registration of all persons who, like defendant here, were convicted of voluntary oral copulation with a minor of the age of 16 or 17, but not of someone convicted of voluntary sexual intercourse with a minor of the same age, violates the equal protection clauses of the federal and state Constitutions," the court ruled.

"We perceive no reason why the legislature would conclude that persons who are convicted of voluntary oral copulation with adolescents 16 to 17 years old...constitute a class of 'particularly incorrigible offenders'... who require lifetime surveillance as sex offenders."

Today, in 38 of the 50 U.S. states consensual sex with a 16- or 17-year old is legal.

[Rick Barton]

Obviously, the other 17% of them are drunk sluts before going on spring break!

Just where do these other 17% like to hang out?

Ted Kennedy

[strat]

When I lived in France I noticed a distinct lack of "No Trespassing" signs/fences, and one was free to wander around picturesque abandonded buildings with rotting floors and collapsing roofs, etc. "Attractive nuisance" is a foreign (American) concept there. They also drive really fast.

I love that about France, but Europe can be weird...sometimes you're "just supposed to know" that things aren't o.k.

I was at a big event at a campground in the Netherlands, and a friend and I decided to take a hike along some train tracks outside. We were well away from the tracks, on a path paralleling them but the train engineer STOPPED THE TRAIN to chew us out for being there.

I figured it was a European terrorist-concern thing, but in retrospect I decided it was just some authoritarian habit.

[jack]

Maybe I should have gone to Spring Break instead of sitting in my room for 7 years.

[R C Dean]

Obviously, the other 17% of them are drunk sluts before going on spring break!

Whew. I was worried there for a moment.

[Twba]

Maybe I should have gone to Spring Break instead of sitting in my room for 7 years.

Spring break only lasts one week.

[Keith]

"Thirty-one Americans have been reported as kidnapped just across the Mexican border. According to U.S. officials, two of them have been confirmed dead, and a dozen have returned home either by paying a ransom or somehow escaping. That means 17 Americans are unaccounted for, somewhere in the Nuevo Laredo area of Mexico -- dead or alive."

That sounds nothing like the Nuevo Laredo I went to on Spring Break to visit the veterinarian. My cat was very very sick and needed medicine.

[tzs]

Well, the thing about learning from stupidity is you hope you learn from it before you end up, well, dead or knocked up or quadripalegic from a car accident.

I'm not too much against the researchers showing that common knowledge about what happens on Spring Break actually does happen on Spring Break. Think of it as "just double-checking to make sure" because sometimes "common knowledge" turns out to be not true. It woulda been nice if their executive statements about what they found out didn't fall so much in the "duh!" category, although that might have been the editor's re-write.

I agree with the commentator above about the imbecility of trying to protect your little darling from everything up to age 16 and then suddenly gifting him with a hot-rod.

Or you could look at it as encouraging more Darwin awards.

[VM]

slightly on topic...
grrrrrr.

"The media seems unable to change its storyline of ever-increasing bad behavior by young people. It was forced to accept dropping crime rates ? but it will not abide the fact that today?s youth, both male and female, are better behaved on almost every measure than their parents were. Good news may not be news ? but faking bad news is not the answer."

[NoStar]

Boats are dangerous.
Remember this song? Stairway To Gilligan

http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~pennywiz/Funhouse/gilliganE.html