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Post by
Haxzor
GETSUM
Post by
Adamsm
Ah, fair enough. Good luck :)
Lol thanks.
GETSUM
Quiet you lol.
Post by
Adamsm
In Florida, it used to be illegal to practice the somewhat dangerous trade of Interior Design without a license. (As it now is in Alabama, Louisiana, and Nevada. Nineteen other states have restrictions on interior design.) This law was in place, obviously, to protect the public from designers who might attempt to ply their trade without a degree, or the proper safety measures, like never combining polka dots with paisley. The people of Florida were thus protected for decades, with not one interior design related fatality in all that time.
Riding the wave of pseudo-populist Tea Baggery, Florida’s new Governor Rick Scott has been cleaning house in the state’s capital. I think it’s fair in general to call him pro-business, and anti-everyone else. While I have not been a fan of much of Scott’s agenda, one sort of funny thing he decided to do was to take on “Big Design”, head on, by way of eliminating the more-or-less absurd licensing requirement. Amusingly, it was not easy.
Licensed designers are fightin’ mad about losing their “protected status” here in Florida. They hired lobbyists, and waged a PR campaign on their own behalf. They gathered up design students from campuses all over the state and sent them to the legislature to plead their case. The students discussed the effect color choices had on the human nervous system, how a degree, apprenticeship and exam protected the good people of Florida from wicked and incompetent “faux” designers, the fact that 88,000 deaths were prevented annually here in Florida due to proper fabric selection, and finally how their own degrees would become completely worthless should “just anybody” be allowed to practice interior design in the state — as, I presume, are the degrees of designers in the other forty-seven states of the Union. Actually, it was this final reason that caught my attention, as implicit within it is the admission that the licensing was the one and only thing keeping a design degree from actually being worthless, as well as an acknowledgment that anyone can do the job. (For the record I don’t really think that’s true, you do need an eye for it and a familiarity with the tools of the trade, but it’s interesting from a rhetorical standpoint.)
Now Alabama, for instance, has recently gone the other way. There they have passed a law making it illegal to rearrange furniture without a license, with penalties up to and including a year in the pokey. State Representative Blaine Galliher says the law is essential “to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of the consumer in the state of Alabama.” It is also essential to continued campaign contributions from the American Society of Interior Designers, though he is less garrulous on this point. (ASID… Big Design)
ASID points to the fact that qualified designers are absolutely necessary to handle the tough decision making, such as placing brighter colors and kid-sized furniture in a kids’ library, or putting down a mat on a slippery floor. Things that you or I would never in a million years have considered possible. The ASID maintains that “every decision a designer makes saves lives”, (like which end of the sofa needs a throw pillow) and that 11,000 deaths are caused annually in America by bad design — like confusing tile patterns and a lack of pink. (Sadly, those are their examples, not mine.) To date they haven’t revealed how they arrived at that number, or made available the names of any design-related fatalities. During legislative argument in Florida, (home of the 88,000 annually prevented deaths) the Florida Attorney General’s office stated they could find no evidence that the licensing of interior designers was of any benefit to the public in any way.
Personally I am astounded by the lack of me having killed myself by decorating my own home. I feel I should be terrified by my lack of qualification for picking out sheets, towels, and wall colors, and I wonder how worried about my fish (whose tank I decorated) I should be. Still, and I feel it’s important that I should admit this, I think the ol’ Tea Bagger got this one right… as long as I can manage to put down the new jute rug I got for the living room without blowing up my house.
Post by
Tartonga
I popped up without knowing what you were talking about but as I soon as I read:
..11,000 deaths are caused anually in America by bad design..
I started wondering: who is designing $%it that bad? Lol.
Post by
Haxzor
Americans
Post by
MyTie
Americans
The answer to "Who are the only ones that matter?" if you are a mindless patritic idiot redneck, or the answer to "Who are the only ones who don't matter?" if you are a mindless snobby arogant foreign jerk (also applies to self loathing liberal pansies).
Post by
Haxzor
I popped up without knowing what you were talking about but as I soon as I read:
..11,000 deaths are caused anually in America by bad design..
I started wondering: who is designing $%it that bad? Lol.
Americans
Post by
124027
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Squishalot
I popped up without knowing what you were talking about but as I soon as I read:
..11,000 deaths are caused anually in America by bad design..
I started wondering: who is designing $%it that bad? Lol.
Americans
I'm actually thinking the Swedes. Ikea's dangerous, don't you know!
Post by
Lombax
Hi and bai, of to the skiing slope.
Post by
MyTie
I just spent 10 minutes typing out a well researched reply to Haxzor, and then after I submitted it to wowhead, the whole thing disappears and I am left with nothing.
Nice.
Post by
Squishalot
It's a sign, no?
Or irony, at the very least.
Post by
MyTie
I popped up without knowing what you were talking about but as I soon as I read:
..11,000 deaths are caused anually in America by bad design..
I started wondering: who is designing $%it that bad? Lol.
Americans
This is now the second time I am going to type this, due to wowhead being stupid and 'losing' it:
It seems like everytime anything goes wrong in the world, Americans are blamed. War? Americans getting involved. Genocide? Americans not getting involved. Starvation? Americans not giving. Economic troubles? Americans sending over too much money. People too fat? Probably Americans. People too skinny? Americans. Peanuts too salty? Americans. Poo is stinky? Must be American poo. Even before the problem is described some people jump onto the ZOMG AMERICA bandwagon. I've seen it before: It's pretty sad in the world today when *interrupt* damn Americans.
Anyway, I was contemplating the root of this social phenomenon while enjoying Pink Panther cartoons earlier today. I received a whole pile of them in from Netflix. Around DVD 4, something very terrible happened to my Pink Panther: canned laughter. If you've ever seen The Flinstones, or Scooby Doo, then you know what I'm talking about. Someone stubs their toe, and for exactly 1.2 seconds there is intense laughter, which starts and ends abruptly. I was very bothered by the decision on the part of the artists to do this to the cartoons. All of a sudden, the cartoons were no longer enjoyable to me. Something about this canned laughter was ruining the cartoons. Nothing else changed about them. The panther was still placed in ironic situations where ridiculous things happened to him. Then it dawned on me that the situations themselves weren't really funny at all. I hadn't been laughing at all in the previous episodes. I thought about why I was watching them in the first place and came to the conclusion that I was admiring the artistic design of them. I enjoyed the cool and laid back setting, as well as the unforced pace. The music of the Pink Panther jived right along with the events. The mood, not the humor, drove them. So this canned laughter was completely out of place. It wasn't that it was offensive, in the way canned laughter placed in Schindler's List would have been, but it was out of place, the way canned laughter placed in Pirates of the Carribean would be. Pirates of the Carribean does have elements of humor, much like the pink panther, but also like the pink panther, is enjoyable because of the atmosphere, not because of it's value in humor. In retrospect, canned laughter in Schindler's List would be much more enjoyable than canned laughter in Pirates of the Carribean because of the shock value/dark humor at listening to people laugh at children being burned. But I digress, there was something more sinister at foot that offended me than the simple out of place distraction of the canned laughter. I then realized that I dislike being told what to think of something. No one ends a joke by saying "start laughing". No where in Schindler's List does a charachter look into the camera and tell you to "start crying". True, some of the actors/actresses do cry during the movie, but emotional acting is quite a bit different from the forced heaving of canned laughter. Then I realized that I was the minority in this. Looking at the huge success of the Flinstones, and Scooby Doo, I realize that most people don't mind being told what to think at certain points. I find myself wondering, when I hear the laughter, if it is genuinely funny enough to laugh at. I being weighing in my mind how un funny the event might actually be. The laughter actually gets me thinking about how
not funny
the whole joke is. But society is vastly different from me. Then I realized that the whole "Hate America" garbage is just like the canned laughter. People are told what to think of something, not by the merit of the actual idea being weighed, but by popular opinion. As if the joke itself needn't be funny, but the fact that other people are laughing at it means you should also find it funny. Similarly, Americans may not be all that bad, but because society says they are, you should also follow suit. Canned laughter reminded me of how mindless and stupid people can be. It was a reaffirmation of everything I despise about fashion and popular opinion.
TLDR: Think for yourself, Hax, instead of regurgitating popular opinion.
Post by
MyTie
It deleted it again that time, but I had copy pasta ready.
Post by
Haxzor
umad?
Post by
MyTie
umad?
Words cannot describe my anger. I'm like that guy from 'Falling Down', when he wanted breakfast but they were only serving lunch.
Actually, Haxzor, the substance of your post I was responding to is actually of very little value to me, as is my ability to convince you personally. Your post just offered me the opportunity to voice my opinion.
You set up the soapbox for me.
Post by
Haxzor
ALLEY OOP!
Post by
MyTie
ALLEY OOP!
Well played old boy!
Post by
340646
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Perkocet
I was soooo getting ready to read that huge wall of text.
But then I didn't. Can have summary?
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