Daily Dose of Common Sense

You call a friend’s cell phone to leave a quick message. You hear a cheerful and brief message from your buddy. Then, you’re bogged down by inane instructions on what to do next.

“Press 5 to page this person now.” Pause. “At the tone, please leave your message.” Pause. “After you have finished recording your message, you may hang up or press 1 for more options.” Pause. Beeeeeep.

Aren’t we at the point where we know what to do when we hear the beep? Cell phones aren’t exactly new. And, even if you’re confused on what to do, most people say something in their outgoing message that gives a hint. “It’s Rich. I can’t take your call but leave a message at the beep and I’ll get back to you.”

And, has anyone ever really pressed 5?

Not all cell carriers have this standard instruction paragraph. The ones that do should get rid of it. From what we’ve read, it’s not exactly easy to remove yourself but you can go through your set-up options to try. If you succeed, your friends will thank you later.

In a move that will elicit many “Yeah, duh” responses, a Chicago radio host declares that waterboarding is torture. Only, he was trying to prove waterboarding isn’t torture. Yesterday, conservative shock-jock Erich “Mancow” Muller subjected himself to a waterboarding experiment in order to silence the critics of the procedure. Mancow expected to chill out for thirty seconds while water was poured down his nose. Instead, he lasted six.

“It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that’s no joke,” Mancow said. Yes, that’s what we thought you would say. If you’ve ever been in a pool and read the description of waterboarding, you should be able to put the pieces together. It would be hellishly horrible. A Vanity Fair reporter did the same experiment last year and said he was traumatized for months afterwards.

It’s not called “torture” for nothing. The technique of waterboarding has been around for centuries and there is a reason why bad people still use it as an interrogation device. Now that Mancow has seen how awful it is, let’s hope he puts his big mouth to use and pressures our government to stop doing it.

Some people aren’t content with making only one or two bad decisions at a time. Two Domino’s Pizza employees in North Carolina decided not only to abuse customer food, they also chose to film it. But, they didn’t stop there. They wanted to brag about it so they posted the self-made video to YouTube. Some reports said the video had been watched over a million times before being taken down. One of those viewers alerted Domino’s to the shenanigans, which showed an employee making sandwiches with ingredients that had been in his nose.

This is a PR nightmare for the parent company, who has not only fired the two employees but is also considering legal action against them. The two were also arrested and charged with “distrubiting prohibited food.” Wisely, Domino’s immediately went to the Internet to get apologies out to consumers. They began Twittering (@dpzinfo) and the company president put his own response video on YouTube.

Broadcasting one’s life—whether through video, blogging, tweeting, or other social media—can have a dark side. When you make things public, anyone can see, share, and comment on them. These two employees may have thought it was all hilarious, but honestly…did they think YouTube was their own private video-sharing service?

Last month, a German teacher jumped in the polar bear exhibit at the Berlin Zoo and took a swim. The result? Polar bear attack.

This episode continues a bizarre pattern in recent years of inappropriate behavior at zoos. People seem to have forgotten that these are WILD animals. Last November, a student was bitten by a panda bear in China because he was attempting to hug the animal. In 2007, a 15-year old boy jumped into the panda exhibit in the Beijing Zoo, only to have the bear bite him severely on both legs.

Obviously, no one is glad that these people were injured. But some folks have clearly forgotten that polar bears and panda bears, while cute, are still BEARS.

Clearly, zoos need to not only think about keeping the wild animals in but also the crazy zoo visitors OUT.