每天读一篇英语小故事：New Dog-Barking Law
Noise. It gets into your head and under your skin. Too much noise can turnordinary people into raging maniacs. All too-common noises in neighborhoods are
the blaring TVs, blaring car radios, and barking dogs. Most cities have
ordinances against excessive noise. Of course, if you complain about your
neighbor’s noise, your neighbor will hate you and start making more noise. So,
many people try to ignore their inconsiderate neighbors. Finally, when they can
take it no longer, they simply move.
The city council of Los Angeles recently came to the rescue of its
residents—or seemed to. It passed a new ordinance: the owner of a dog that barks
for 30 minutes straight will get a warning the first time a complaint is made.
For a second complaint, the owner will pay a $100 fine or go to jail for a week
maximum, or both. The council wrote no penalty concerning a third or fourth
complaint. “Finally,” said Zev Doheny, “we’ve passed a noise law with some teeth
in it.”
Of course, there are a few problems with the new law: How does a resident
prove that a dog was barking for 30 minutes? Does he present an audio tape? With
modern technology, couldn’t that tape easily be “doctored” so that one minute of
actual barking magically becomes 30 minutes? Couldn’t a person tape just any old
dog barking and then claim that it’s his neighbor’s dog doing all that barking?
Do dogs have voiceprints, like humans have fingerprints? Will all dogs have to
get “voice-printed?”
“There isn’t one brain among the lot of them,” complained the owner of a
pet store when he heard about the council’s new law. “Their ‘solutions’ are
almost always worse than the problems themselves.”
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