What City Banned Doorknobs? And Why Wasn't That Enough to be Reason's November Nanny of the Month?

We've been announcing a "Nanny of the Month" for years now as a way of calling attention to the "busybodies who make it their business to know your business." Each month, we name a couple of runners-up and then a champion (or, in the case of repeat offenders such as New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, we offer a lifetime achievement award).

How awful was the selection in November? Get this: A city that has banned doorknobs didn't get the top prize. Click above to watch the 80-second vid now or go here for the whole story.

Comments

[Snark Plissken]

From the doorknob article:

It is not like the doorknob will disappear entirely. Like many inventions, it will hold its own for a long, long time. There are, after all, a few people who still use typewriters instead of computers. Vancouver's rule is not retroactive to existing homes. But over time, the effect will become magnified as housing is replaced.

Except that no government I know of ever made using a typewriter illegal. Nor candles. Those things were simply replaced naturally by superior technology.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Wow, Brandon Weeden just missed a snap, chased the ball back into his own endzone, and then proceeded to kick the ball out of bounds for a safety.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

also, never count out the Patriots.

[Ivoted4KODOS]

Damn right! 9-3 baby!!!

[Kid Xenocles]

At that point the safety is the best you can hope for.

[General Butt Naked]

To whom it may concern,

I linked the doorknob nanny article days ago and still have not received my hat tip.

Consider my (non-existent) subscription retroactively cancelled.

Good day, SIR.

[anarch]

Because hat tips to some are thought to cause hurt feelings in others, they have been banned. Thank you.

[Ted S.]

Vancouver banned hat-tips, too.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

My understanding is the ban not only applies to doorknobs,

The ban also extends to all faucets.

Tim Stainton, a professor and director of the School of Social Work at the University of B.C., says the concept is based around building a society as open as possible to everyone, rather than creating exceptions to fit a few.

[Kid Xenocles]

I can't imagine very many doorknobs are used in faucets.

[Francisco d Anconia]

It's "like" a door knob.

You know who else is like a doorknob?

[Kid Xenocles]

Nobody wants to hear about your penis.

[Ivoted4KODOS]

I learned a new word reading the comments. Able-ist. (Hyphen for clarity purposes only). What a #%+ing brave new world we live in where people use words like ableist and cis gendered and are not immediately shunned for making our civilization dumber. I don't give two shits what people do in their private lives (more power to them), but don't label me a bigot because I don't want laws to force everyone to change for you or redefine words and biological categories to preserve your feelings.

[PapayaSF]

To reach Progressive Utopia, the thinking of the masses must be changed, and so the language must change. It's called Newspeak.

[Zeb]

What I want to know is when is someone going to do something about the rampant discrimination against the stupid and the lazy. We cannot truly be an egalitarian society until stupid, lazy layabouts are equally represented in corporate leadership, academia and the highest levels of government. THe world is just unfairly set up to favor those who are capable and willing to work hard.

[Heroic Mulatto]

We cannot truly be an egalitarian society until stupid, lazy layabouts are equally represented in corporate leadership, academia and the highest levels of government.

Joe Biden: Vice-President of America, 2008-present

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

[Geoff Nathan]

This universal design idea is spreading, at least at universities. The idea is to make everything usable by everyone without any special accommodations. So everything is built on the assumption that all users are deaf and blind (if you read the article linked above you'll see that includes, for example, fire alarms, which now must have flashing lights as well as horns).
Of course, they are inconsistent in their insistence. For example, there are a few folks like Helen Keller around, and to include them all fire alarms would have to make the floor vibrate too. Or something. As is often the case, the intentions are noble, and the unintended consequences will be entertaining to watch.
Disclosure: I serve on my university's 'universal design web committee', and am trying to keep things within a reasonable scope.

[Redmanfms]

As is often the case, the intentions are noble, and the unintended consequences will be entertaining to watch.

At this point I question even the nobility of the intentions.

Given that progs have a very well known propensity to projection and that their immediate fallback in any conversation with a person who disagrees with them is to question their motives, I'm left questioning whether even they believe their intentions are noble.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

You know who else had good intentions?

[Generic Stranger]

Neville Chamberlain?

[pan fried wylie]

For fucks sake.

If there's gonna be any mandate related to water faucets, it should be foot actuation. Same for flushing toilets. Foot pedals. No hand contact. Especially in places like hospitals, but probably in all gov't facilities too.

If I could imagine a way to open doors with your foot, I'd mandate that too. "Ok, washed my hands, now I'll just leave the bathroom and touch the nasty door knob/lever and pickup anything I just washed off."

[Kid Xenocles]

What about wheelchair-bound folks?

[pan fried wylie]

thought of this response a minute too late...

[Zeb]

For the completely immobile we really need everything just to be controlled by eye movement. Or perhaps by thought alone. Or perhaps just have all lights and faucets always on and only Star Trek style self opening doors.

[pan fried wylie]

for the footless, I'm sure the pedals could be designed to accommodate cane/crutch/wheel actuation too.

[Jordan]

I fucking hate those lever-type sinks (whatever the hell they're called). The ones in my apartment are brand spanking new, and yet are completely awful. Trying to turn them off all the way takes several attempts to get it right. And forget about trying to get a precise pressure/temperature combination.

[Francisco d Anconia]

The single lever actuators are money.

[Greg]

Open to "everyone", except for those who prefer doorknobs.

[juris imprudent]

Oh pfshaw with the doorknobs. 24/7 has turned into 24/3 this past week. Has it really been that slow of a news week?

[pan fried wylie]

Were I a journalist, the news week would have to be pretty fast to interrupt my vacation.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

All those stories demand conclusions. Have the Thanksgiving travelers stranded at the airports escaped? Or have they by now resorted to cannibalism to survive?

Was the Pizza Hut manager really fired? How did he react? Did he abandon his wife and kids to run off to South Florida with his gay lover?

I need answers, dammnit!

[Kid Xenocles]

Browns about to let their city down one more time at the hands of the London Jaguars.

[Greg F]

The Bills just outdid them.

[AlmightyJB]

I'm afraid of levers so they should reverse this ban 'cause it's offensive to me.

[Warrren]

For you I'm totally going to design a door-knob action rifle.

[AlmightyJB]

swwweeeeet:)

[Rich]

And, as doorknobs go, so too will go those other ubiquitous knobs, the ones that turn on and off water faucets. For they too are being legislatively upgraded to levers more conducive to the arthritic, gnarled or weakened hands we earn with age.

those other ubiquitous knobs is a nice band name.

Why are there no lifts to the sink in public restrooms? Why do the legislators hate little kids?

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Italian woman, visiting the UK for work, was forcibly given a c-section and had her baby seized by British social services

Last summer a pregnant Italian mother flew to England for a two-week Ryanair training course at Stansted. Staying at an airport hotel, she had something of a panic attack when she couldn't find the passports for her two daughters, who were with her mother back in Italy. She called the police, who arrived at her room when she was on the phone to her mother. The police asked to speak to the grandmother, who explained that her daughter was probably over-excited because she suffered from a "bipolar" condition and hadn't been taking her medication to calm her down.

The police told the mother that they were taking her to hospital to "make sure that the baby was OK". On arrival, she was startled to see that it was a psychiatric hospital, and said she wanted to go back to her hotel. She was restrained by orderlies, sectioned under the Mental Health Act and told that she must stay in the hospital.

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

By now Essex social services were involved, and five weeks later she was told she could not have breakfast that day. When no explanation was forthcoming, she volubly protested. She was strapped down and forcibly sedated, and when she woke up hours later, found she was in a different hospital and that her baby had been removed by caesarean section while she was unconscious and taken into care by social workers. She was not allowed to see her baby daughter, and later learnt that a High Court judge, Mr Justice Mostyn, had given the social workers permission to arrange for the child to be delivered. In October, at a hearing before another judge, she was represented by lawyers assigned to her by the local authority and told she would be escorted back to Italy without her baby.
[...]
In February, when the mother returned to Chelmsford to plead for the return of her daughter, the judge, I am told, admitted that, since resuming her medication, she seemed impressively articulate and a different person from the one he had seen earlier. But, because he could not risk a failure to maintain her medication in the future, he ruled that the child must be placed for adoption.

Holy shit, this is like a Kafka story.

[Heroic Mulatto]

By now a new twist had entered the story. Supported by the mother, her American husband ? from whom she is amicably separated, and who is the father of her eldest daughter ? asked that the baby be sent to Los Angeles to live with his sister, herself a very capable mother, described by her US lawyer as "a rock". British law is clear that wherever possible children should be adopted by members of their wider family. But in March, Essex social services ruled that this was unacceptable because, even though she was the aunt of the baby's stepsister, the American woman had no "blood" tie to the baby. So, rather than allow the child to be looked after by her "kin", she must be sent to live with complete strangers.

I think that had more to do with British snobbery towards us "colonials" than anything else.

[hotsy totsy]

What horrible, horrible people. If that judge or those social workers ever come to the US they should be arrested and sent to Guantanamo for ..being horrible.

[Entropy Void]

Soylent Green is People.

[Cdr Lytton]

But it's the Roma stealing babies that get Euros in an uproar.

[Acosmist]

Why shouldn't it? They're awful.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Well, for one, the latest Gypsies baby-theft scare turned out to be not true.

Jus' sayin'

[Rhywun]

We control the horizontal, and the vertical.

[Jordan]

What's she complaining about? After all, FREE HEALTHCARE is the greatest liberty of all.

"If you like your baby, you can keep it".

[Redmanfms]

Fuck. Just fuck. If I were involved in an affair like that I'd probably go Law Abiding Citizen on their asses. Nothing quite as clever or 3-dimensional chess as Clyde Shelton, just lots and lots of murder and blood.

[Ted S.]

The correct term is antisocial services.

[TeamBarstool]

whatever. They did this in my neck of the woods years ago.
Copycat Canucks...

http://www.pimaxpress.com/Buil.....ignOrd.pdf

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

Does this mean bacon is now cannibalism?

[The Rt. Hon. Serious Man, Visc]

Leading geneticist Dr Eugene McCarthy claims humans descended from sex between a chimp and a pig

Wait, so Mrs. Garrison was right the whole time?!

[Entropy Void]

That was the funniest damn thing I have seen in a long time.

Thank you, Honorable Viscount.

[Generic Stranger]

No, but it does mean that Al Gore was...

[SQRLSY One]

Can we PLEEEEASE get man-bear-pig to run for President / Emperor REALLY SOON now? We really-really-REALLY NEED an organism like Man-Bear-Pig to SAVE us ALL!!!

[Francisco d Anconia]

See ladies...

It's NOT just men.

[Heroic Mulatto]

THE REAL REASON FOR THE DOORKNOB BAN!

[SQRLSY One]

I'm too "scurred" to open up my newspaper tomorrow, now, I am afraid there will be headlines about mutant radiation-infected cyborg / men in Japan who are all wildly, willy-nilly-WILLY-nilly, flocking to the nearest surgery center, getting their REAL members replaced by door-knobs! Now you have given me NIGHTMARES!!! See what you have done, I will have to sue you for my PTSD?

[Rhywun]

Yes, it is freaky that Japanese women want to look like baby-dolls.

[The Googly]

I'll be in my bunk.

[Eduard van Haalen]

Now they'll sell the used doorknobs in vending machines.

[Entropy Void]

Like I've said before: I will trade ALL of the doorknobs in my possession for two Kanukistaner Toilets.

[Episiarch]

Holy shit the Chiefs are annihilating the Broncos so far. Brutal. I don't know if I love it or don't care.

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

Apathy is the best policy.

[hotsy totsy]

Annihilation contained. Broncos win 35-28. Go Broncos!

[Derpetologist]

OT: Well, after valiantly battling progs on Derpbook I have at long last been blocked by the most obnoxious of them. Fine by me. I have had my fill of prog derp. I scored a nice victory when I linked to something from Cato. Prog says Cato is untrustworthy because it gets corporate money. I replied doesn't that make Obama untrustworthy too since he also got millions of corporate donations? I swear I could almost hear the crickets chirping.

[PapayaSF]

Jeebus, it seems like the entire progtard population simply does not know what an ad hominem fallacy is. They blithely dismiss anything reported in media they don't like, or connected to funding they don't like.

[Derpetologist]

You don't know the half of it. I've seen derp that would turn your hair white. I had prog tell me that the risk of nuclear terrorism is an externality which justifies massive government. I think externality is just a buzzword he learned from other progs that can be invoked to justify whatever the government does.

[Derpetologist]

Yes, they simply cannot fathom that the truth value of a statement does not depend on who says it. I asked once whether 2+2=4 would be false if [insert name of Team Red person] said it. No answer.

[PapayaSF]

I like the formulation "Just because an idiot says the sky is blue doesn't make it another color."

[Derpetologist]

I'll saving this gem for later.

[Heroic Mulatto]

I had prog tell me that the risk of nuclear terrorism is an externality which justifies massive government.

So Proggies are just crossdressing Neocons?

Good to know.

[Zeb]

Well, I think neocons started out as anti-communist proggies, so it's not so surprising.

[Heroic Mulatto]

"A Progressive is what happens when a liberal goes bad."

--Pat Condell

[Derpetologist]

The man is an absolute boss. What amazes me the most is that he appears to do all his videos in one unedited take.

[Ted S.]

Why is it that business-funded research is automatically suspect, but government-funded research that claims we need more government is so self-evidently unbiased?

[Derpetologist]

The answer I was given is that groups like Cato which get corporate money must be getting paid to lie, because there couldn't possibly be any other reason nor any reason for a right-thinking person to donate to them.

[PapayaSF]

"Because our government is a democracy, and people who work for it aren't doing so for profit." /progtard

[Archduke von Pantsfan]

Rob Ford attended an NFL game today.
Let's see what happened.

[Derpetologist]

On the bright side, one of them who owns a small business reluctantly admitted that he incorporated in Cook County rather than Chicago to avoid taxes and red tape. So it appears that some progs are capable of understanding the way taxes and red tape stifle business.

[Heroic Mulatto]

So it appears that some progs are capable of understanding the way taxes and red tape stifle business.

Or maybe some of us just are more equal than others, tovarishch.

[Derpetologist]

Yes, progs love taxes and regulations except when it affects them.