obsolete

I've come to realize lately that there's a lot of practices and rules in effect these days that, thanks to modern technology and the nature of our society, frankly shouldn't be.
I may periodically update this list as the spirit moves me.

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Long-Distance charges. Did you know that phone companies still make a distinction between local and long-distance dialing? Calling out of your 3-digit local access zone tacks on a large amount to landline prices. While this made sense back in the day of human operators and manual switchboards, when you had to pay more people to make those connections for you, these days thanks to digital and satellite technology that's simply not done. Dialing a local call takes exactly the same amount of human effort as placing a call to China--exactly none. How is charging us extra for no extra service justified?

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ATM loyalty fees. My bank charges me $1.50 when I withdraw any amount of cash from another bank or credit union's ATM. Frequently, the bank who owns the ATM will too. I wind up blowing $3-4 every time i make a transaction when I'm not in the same time zone as my bank. This is unacceptable. I'm paying a machine--which, i hasten to add, does not get paid--to access my own money because my bank can't or won't do it themselves. This is no inconvenience to my bank as the entire system of transfers is done automatically by mutually accessed computer systems, such as NYCE or Interlink. I know for a fact that banks do not pay per transaction to use these services because in the UK no ATM requires a service fee, even to access my US account.

I believe its fairly obvious to any reader that, if my bank is available, i would of course use my bank's ATM. If I'm Not using my own bank's ATM, its obviously because my bank has failed to provide one within a reasonable range of me. Basing my assumptions on what I'll call "expected human reasoning skills," most people aren't going to join a bank that they can't access on a regular basis from their homes. It's illogical. So if you find yourself needing to use an ATM or other service from another bank, its probably because you're not near home. Why punish your customers for straying afield? Shouldn't you be proud of them for traveling, as traveling is expensive and therefore keeps money circulating?

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Meal time. These days people are at their desks at all sorts of crazy hours, in order to keep up with the global money market and foreign business. Every industry has people pulling all-nighters, particularly in energy, healthcare, and travel. Now, I respect most restaurants' right to keep old fashioned business hours because there still are a very large number of 9-5ers employed and its not worth the expense of staying open all night. I know that there's at least one Denny's in each town and most late-nighters are fine with their 2am fried fare. But. My tolerance ends when I enter an airport. Airport managers know good and damn well that people are departing and arriving at all hours of day and night, and that traveling does all sorts of screwy things to the metabolism. Yet every single restaurant in the airport closes by 9pm. The manager of Joe's Grass Strip can close the café at 5 if he wants--chances are it won't inconvenience too many people. But when every food joint in your wing of Las Vegas International is locked up two hours before you depart, you can't help but wonder if this is a gesture of contempt for lower-fare late night fliers.

Even more unacceptable, when you board a 6-hour flight, you expect to be fed en-route. 6 hours is a long time, and after all, you didn't have the opportunity to buy food after the security checkpoint because everything in the airport was closed. And we all know how dangerous granola bars are. But lo and behold, when you get in the plane you discover that meal-service is only provided during meal-times, and you will be fed half a diet coke and a six mini-pretzels on this flight tonight. (but hey, meal service doesn't mean a whole lot anyway when you're a vegetarian and your seat-mate is Hindu and all they have is cheeseburgers.) If the flight staff is working, it is business time. The time of day is irrelevant. Moreover, when you are in flight you are not moving with the rotation of the earth, so the passage and indeed linear concept of time becomes debatable, so how can we base "mealtime" on the land-based 24-hour clock? I've seen the sun rise 3 times in one 24-hour period--you dare to tell me that daytime is absolute?

Time zoning, and even the idea of rotational daylight phases, is a fairly new phenomenon within the human experience. It took sailors quite a while to figure out that the 3-D nature of the planet was changing the movements of navigation stars from their normal patterns in Europe, leading to numerous lost boats and scratched heads. (a full and coherent explanation of this, paired with the development of spring-movement clocks to keep accurate time where pendulum clocks failed on rocking boats, can be found at the Greenwich Observatory.) It has taken heaps of math and science to invent the standardized planetary time system we have, which is not only pathetically fallible (there are several pacific islands that are cut in half by the International Date Line, which among other problems, has led to several people missing their birthdays) but it throws the arbitrary nature of time as we've established it into sharp relief.

We are on an infinitely small (or large, given the infinite and potentially variable nature of infinity) ball spinning in circles in bigger circles in space, which as far as we know has no center and therefore cannot spin on an axis or have a central or universal time, except for one based on the hypothetical birth of the universe, as estimated through perceived planetary red-shifting in accordance with the earth-based theory of universal expansion. The only people to whom our concept of time is at all pertinent is us, and even then there are a minimum of 24 lunchtimes in a rotational day and WHY HAVEN'T YOU GIVEN ME A SANDWICH YET?

I feel better.

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College Tuition. We all know that college is just high school II these days, and that a college degree only proves that you're as educated as the stoner on the "2-o and go" plan in the mortarboard beside you. So why are we all paying out the ass for what has become basic public schooling? Why is there competition and an application process? Everyone can get admitted somewhere, and few employers actually care where you earned your degree. Why don't taxes support grades 13-16 like the other 12? Why do we continue to break the bank and put ourselves into overwhelming debt when we know that a degree will not improve our chances of gaining employment? (indeed, it has prevented me from finding some jobs.) It is in the economy's best interest to either make a college degree mean something (if the guy next to me in line to graduate found himself playing chess against a cabbage, it could be anyone's game) or make it free. Millions of unemployable graduates defaulting on their student loans can't be good for the economy.

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Traffic Speed Enforcement. Freeway speed limits were introduced at the time of the first oil shortage in the mid 1970's to help reduce overall fuel consumption. Now that we've started developing fuel efficient vehicles, what keeps cops ticketing cautiously quick drivers? Fast does not necessitate reckless or dangerous, as regional high speed limits will attest. If the speed limit is 75 on a flat, straight, empty road in Arizona, why do people get fined for driving 75 on a flat, straight, empty road in North Carolina?

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The pairing of Pagan festivals and Christian holy days. Not that I mind terribly, but now that everyone knows that Jesus did not lay the first Easter egg and the burning bush was not caused by a faulty Christmas light wire, what perpetuates these unions? Its fun, but has been rendered completely meaningless by virtue of its alliance. You can't simultaneously give thanks to the Only Son of the Only God (huh?) and the Goddess of Fertility. (i love that about Christian doublespeak--"he is one god, but he is three separate entities all at the same time. it is possible because god is almighty." sounds like a typo that you guys just decided to run with.)

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Guys, let go of the past. I'm tired of paying for employees that don't exist and quietly absorbing strains to my credit rating and patience by tolerating an educational money pit and a belief structure that has long outlived its welcome. Everything except Society is moving forward!