Here is an example of what is wrong with the world

It would appear that every argument after WWII is based on the "Slippery Slope" concept.
I blame it on that movie about Lemmings that I watched in Mrs. Murphy's first grade class.
The problem is that sometimes this argument accurately describes a situation but you also have to have some reasoning abilities to evaluate the argument.
It seems from observation that one law leads to 25 more, or hiring one government employee leads to the hiring of 150 more. However, just because one person shoots up a school it doesn't mean that every student is a potential mass murderer.
I wonder how we got this inability to evaluate risk? Does it come from the insurance/lawyer industries obsession with the so-called-science of risk management? Or is it the estrogen in the water supply...
I have been trying to figure out how to make CD's of several albums for my father-in-law. I think I can record album sides, run my 15 year-old copy of "Toast," to define the tracks, save them as high quality music files, and then burn them to a CD. Then I can put the CD into iTunes and convert it to MP3. The trick is to get all the songs in the correct order and to title the CD properly so that iTunes will look up the album in the iTunes store and assign the MP3 ID tags. This will save me from 1. Buying a CD for $10 that I will never listen to again, 2. Typing in album title, artist, album tile artist, song length, song number, album date, and make the MP3 tag by hand.
In the process I came across this discussion of music piracy by the RIAA. I had never really read the rules as I never download anything that is not so weird as to be completely ignored by the RIAA.
I am so amazed at the total lack of perspective of members of Congress. When you read this link you will realize that there are people in jail, or whose lives have been completely ruined for an imaginary crime.
Check out the statistics for money lost to illegal downloads. You do realize they are using the concept that if one person  does it than everybody does it... You could get a felony conviction for downloading the Englebert Humberdick record catalog. What sort of prison status would you get for that?
Of course you have to realize that there are two worlds. There is reality, and there is "virtual reality," for want of a better term.
The advertising world, where Nike shoes are better, the TSA is essential, we need new firetrucks with crew cabs, kids really did fall into five gallon buckets before there were warning labels on them, people really do use saltpeter to bring down great public buildings on a regular basis, and our president is an American.
Then there is the real world where record companies market utter crap to utterly stupid people, where morons wait in line for hours for ugly shoes, and where most illegal downloads were done by weirdo farmers looking for "Gas Station Blues," or "I sleep well and miss trains."
Oh, look... someone is jumping off a cliff! That looks fun! I think I will do it!