Debt slavery is prosperity. Consumption is wealth. Public resources are for private gain. War is peace. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Great article, thanks for keeping it real. I think every parent at times wonders if their child is really Satan-spawn in disguise. My son just turned a year old and though he’s too young for a lot of these obnoxious behaviors, we are having a hell of a time getting him to stop biting. And any parent can relate to the poop thing too – you get used to being smeared with shit.

I’m sure the other behaviors will come, too. My wife and I are bracing ourselves and hoping we can deal with it. We are both independent people and do not buy into the whole indulgent parenting premise that we often see in other parents, and so we have no intention of letting the little guy become a tyrant. Of course, intentions are one thing and reality is another.

Finally, I find the hater trolls like Klytus on this thread hilarious. They seem to be of two varieties – people who have no children of their own who are nevertheless full of advice and scorn for parents who don’t have perfectly behaved toddlers (such a child does not exist), and people who just hate children period.

To the first kind – until you gain the perspective that comes with having your own kid, kindly keep your sanctimonious ignorance to yourself and STFU.

To the second kind – there will always be children, so just deal with it. If you have so little respect for kids (they are the future) and their parents (you have parents too), then I’m glad that you’ll never pass on your hateful genes – there’s enough hate in the world already.

By all means, I encourage you to never have children, but if you do you’re going to be eating a big ol’ slice o’ humble. Maybe then you’ll grow up when you realize you don’t have time anymore to post snarky one-liners on message boards. LOL!

I would disagree with Berger’s pooh-poohing of the effects of urban sprawl on worsening traffic problems. It’s been well-studied, documented and written about in the popular press too. I don’t think that it’s an either/or issue, but rather that they complement and amplify each other’s effects on traffic.

However, I can certainly relate to how drivers can’t “see” things they don’t expect. I take mass transit every day to work. I must walk about 3 blocks along a major thoroughfare and cross two corners of a wide, busy intersection in order to get to my bus stop in the morning. Careless moms in minivans and thick-necked guys in work trucks and tattooed guys smoking cigarettes in sport cars and businessmen in fancy Lexuses are constantly ignoring me or looking the other direction when I have the “walk” signals, not even bothering to check if anyone is in the intersection before making a right turn before whipping around the corner or looking for oncoming traffic in the other direction and hitting the gas before looking.

They may not notice me beforehand, but they sure do after they cut me off with inches to spare or put me in some such danger, because usually I am swearing loudly and utilizing various obscene gestures to get their attention and glare at them in the eye. Idiots.

Or what about how there is zero consideration of when it comes to maintenance or design? In some areas of my neighborhood in Denver, particularly the wealthy ones, there are hardly any sidewalks. Even if there are, they are never plowed when it snows, but rather accept the snow, slush and runoff from the streets and parking lots. This then freezes solid overnight into concrete-like ice mountains that can be four or five feet high, completely blocking the sidewalk. These force pedestrians to risk life and limb by walking into traffic in the street in order to make their way, or possibly taking painful tumble when trying to climb over them. I am relatively young and able bodied and this is often difficult for ME. I’ve seen elderly and handicapped people have a much harder and more dangerous time than myself. Meanwhile, the streets are usually dry and ice free.

I think the idea that Vanderbilt describes, that traffic engineering has traditionally failed to take into account the limitations and nature of human beings is a valid one and needs to be discussed and considered much more than it is. The dominant paradigm of developing urban spaces exclusively for cars and not for human beings has got to change.