The NFL's Safe Spaces Need to Go

I'm taking some time out of my busy life as a grad student to jump on a new bandwagon. Criticizing safe spaces at universities has been a fun hobby for anyone who is looking for extra things to be angry at, and I've got some anger to spare these days, so I want to criticize them too.

I'm vaguely familiar with safe spaces. I recently played tag with a friend's 5 year old, and I was reminded that when playing tag, you NEED to set up a base where tag doesn't count. 5 year olds are really arbitrary about where and when bases exist, but let me tell you this - she put them everywhere, and playing with her was annoying. Losing at tag to a kid who makes the rules was humiliating. A place where you are "safe" has no place in tag or in life.

Which brings me to the most offensive secret safe-spaces in American culture, and I'm honestly shocked this has not been discussed more.

The NFL is absolutely chock full of safe spaces, and it is downright un-American.

The other team's end zone is an absurd place to have a safe-space, but there it is.  Defenders are allowed to clobber whoever is holding the ball until that slippery eel touches the safe zone and is totally off limits.

Take a look at this pansy taking advantage of a safe space. 

At the very least, defenders are allowed to try to stop the other team from getting into the end zone. What's worse are the sidelines. It only looks like football is an anything-goes sort of game, but it's not. Sissy safe-spaces pervade. In fact, most of the world is an unfair safe space - as soon as a player steps 'out of bounds,' he can't be hit, which frustrates defenders to no end. Imagine trying to slam someone's face into.the grass only to find out you can't touch him because he's in a giant safe space with all of his friends standing in a line sticking their tongues out at you.

No wonder Rex Ryan tries to stay on the sidelines

Compare that to a real sport like professional wrestling, where once you knock your opponent out of the ring, you do whatever it takes to finish him because that's how life works. Don't like it? Tough. Eat a steel ladder.

Real men have no use for boundaries

Football isn't immune to the politically correct trend, either. Some players are somehow "different" and hitting them is a foul. Touch a kicker the wrong way and a defender gets flagged, even when the kicker is in the middle of the playing field.

Quit acting like the rules should be different for the vulnerable among us  

These rules insisting that kickers, exposed receivers, or throwing quarterbacks somehow deserve different treatment destroys the integrity of the game. The nerve of Cam Newton appealing to referees because defenders aren't respecting his safe space on the field! 

Don't think of it as brain damage, think of it as a quaterback's rite of passage

I firmly believe that everyone should have a place where they make the rules and feel like they are in control.  For me, like many American males, that is my home. I should not feel like anyone else is imposing their arbitrary and oppressive power structures when I just want to relax and not deal with other people making me feel crappy. My safe space is the football season, so please get your safe spaces out of it.

ed. note - the opinions above do not represent the actual opinions of the author. He is simply grumpy about recent events and decided sarcasm was an ok coping mechanism. 

A Modest Proposal: The future of Drones

Drones are here to stay, so I've been told, so it's high time I became part of the process in determining what our drone-filled future will look like. It seems foolish to me to imagine that they will not be used for violence - law enforcement springs to mind - so I've also accepted that. But I think if they are going to be used for violence, there should be  noble final goal in mind, and I don't trust the police to do this consistently.

I would like to propose a way to use weaponized drones to curb noise pollution in cities. Picture this - explosive drones hovering 10 meters above city streets, patrolling randomly. As someone honks their horn, the drone triangulates the location of the horn and approaches it at a constant rate. When the horn stops honking, the drone returns to its hovering altitude. Perhaps it takes 5 seconds of constant honking for it to reach street level, at which point it latches onto and detonates the honking car in such a way as to only harm the driver. As a side benefit, these drones would need to be regularly serviced, and occasionally replaced, so I do believe this would have a net positive effect on job creation.

Honking to express your disapproval of another driver's actions would still be allowed, but prolonged honking long past its utility would be swifltly eradicated. Traffic jams in which everyone attempts to solve the issue by honking would become deadly games of chance in which the risk of honking far outweighs the potential benefit of... actually, there's no benefit of honking in traffic jams. Everyone hates you when you do that, and it solves nothing, so it really becomes a more exciting game of hot potato.

Perhaps this seems like an over-reaction, but I guarantee that unnecessary honking would decrease rapidly within days of this programs implementation. Of course, the drones would need to learn to recognize car alarms and sirens so that it does not hit unintended consequences, but that could be easily programmed.

Better still, as surveillance technologies such as microphones, high definition cameras, and AI that can monitor and react to situations without human oversight improve, this technology could rapidly be expanded to other behaviors that need curbing, such as smoking in public, clipping your fingernails on public transportation, or talking during movies. So please, write your mayors now, and inform them that you think this is a great idea, and with luck, our own government will implement it soon. If not, don't worry - this technology may soon be available at your local Walmart!