The Fickleness of Americans

This is something that is really irking me the last couple of days, but tomorrow, especially.

When there is a rule, say, Oh for argument's sake, a safety rule about THE WEATHER, why is it that people feel that this is a gray area and just end up ignoring the rule altogether?

What am I talking about?

I'm talking about "Cold Days" in Minnesota.  Evidently, there are "Cold Days" and there are "Snow Days"...snow days being those where there is a blizzard and cold days being the ones where it is so cold it's deadly to go out.  In both of these circumstances, it seems quite obvious to, uhm, wait, NOT GO OUTSIDE.

Now, what pisses me off, is that we have these cold days- days where it is so cold that it will kill you in 10 minutes of being outside- and people are still expected to go to work and school.

I mean, shit, did we learn nothing from our ancestors that didn't have central heating!?

It's not the go OUT that's really the problem because your car is probably in the garage.  But it's what happens when you get BACK TO THE FROZEN CAR that's the problem.

Now, as every car mechanic and physicist will tell you, odd things happen to alloys, rubber, and glass at cold temperatures.  I mean, antifreeze is only good in your car to -40...the currently predicted windchill is -60...which you might argue "well, that's only what it FEELS LIKE"...to which I would say "Yeah, and add another 60 mph to how cold your car is going to feel after driving on the freeway" because metals get cold, too, and just because they don't have an integrated nervous system, doesn't mean that they aren't going to be affected by the cold.

(it is correct, by the way- affected is the action upon, effected is the resultant behavior)

Now, there is a sickness in America that I don't understand.  It is all novel and neat and newsworthy to have the first snow day or cold day in a winter.  Everyone stays home, schools are closed..only the idiots are out in the ditch.

But, heaven forbid, we have more than 1 in month- NOW you're expected to go to work.  NOW the teachers are expected to go to classes- students are supposed to go to classes!

WHY?

Because, heaven forbid, we get off schedule or have a couple of days of slide in these artificially created schedules of our lives where we won't even remember what we did at the end of the week...unless we got into a car accident or lost a limb to frostbite.

Now, in all fairness, Minnesotans aren't the only stupid people out there.  When I went to school in California, we had "Foggy Days", which were when the fog was so bad you couldn't see in front of you.  The school district insisted that it wasn't "that bad" and every time, there was a student fatality on the way to school when it wasn't safe.

I have to ask the world-

HAVE YOU GONE ABSOLUTELY IN SANE!?

If there was different type of hazardous weather, would that make it ok?  Do we need a flood or a tornado now, just to mix it up a bit and reset everyone's sensationalism meter?

In the words of Network News:

I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!

(and now I have to go make sure that I have a good excuse for ditching work tomorrow during hazardous conditions).