You just blatantly ignored the great big warning above and defiantly started to read this article anyway. You don’t care about warnings, do you? Well, you have that trait in common with the rest of the human race.

Warnings have no effect on people. Our Surgeon General warns us on every pack of cigarettes that “Smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema.”

Meanwhile, the Center for Disease Control reports that one in every four adults is a regular smoker.

In England, the warnings are a little more blunt. They say simply, “Smoking causes death,” in big bold letters right across the box. The number of smokers in England is estimated at more than a quarter of the population.

Reuters recently reported doctors in Britain have issued a health warning about video games. Most of the gaming systems released over the past few years feature handheld controllers that vibrate, such as Nintendo’s “Rumble Pack.” Apparently, these can cause long-term muscle and nerve damage after prolonged exposure. In January, Nintendo reported it had sold 1.2 million Game Cube consoles.

So what if your hands start aching and cramping permanently? Just so long as you can still hold onto a cigarette.

North America is one of the biggest global emitters of greenhouse gases, which cause global warming. The EPA reports “coral reef bleaching in Florida, animal range shifts in California, glaciers melting in Montana and marsh loss in Chesapeake Bay.” Who cares? We like warm weather.

Wisconsin is even listed as a global warming hotspot. The number of days per year our Lake Mendota has been covered with ice has decreased 22 percent since the mid-1800s.

Everywhere you drive, there are posted speed limits.

Almost everyone ignores them, even after being pulled over, punished by a fine, and warned that speeding is dangerous.

In 2000, 12,350 people died in car crashes caused by speeding.

President Bush recently issued another stern warning to the “axis of evil.” The Washington Post reports him as saying, “They better get their house in order, is what it means. It means they better respect the rule of law. It means they better not try to terrorize America and our friends and allies, or the justice of this nation will be served on them as well.”

“Axis of evil” member North Korea responded with a terse, “The United States has pushed the situation to the brink of war after throwing away even the mask of dialogue or negotiations.”

Evidently, Bush has failed to notice the ineffectiveness of warnings.

Another frequently ignored warning: fire alarms in dormitories. Often, after a string of false alarms, students develop complacency about them. In 2000, a freshman dormitory at Seton Hall University in New Jersey had 18 false alarms. When a real fire broke out, no one believed the alarm’s warning. Three students died and 62 others were injured in the blaze.

Our entertainment industry in the United States is quite fond of warnings as well. They are generally aimed at parents to keep their kids away from sexually explicit and violent material. The “Parental Advisory” warning sticker on CDs is touted by the Recording Industry Association of America as a “non-removable logo that record companies voluntarily place on products to better inform consumers and retailers while also protecting the rights of the artist.”

Really, it’s a useless little annoying attempt to placate parents. It does nothing to prevent children from buying the albums.

The same is true of the Motion Picture Association of America Movie Rating System. While supposedly there is a law that prevents movie theaters from admitting children under 17 to R-rated features, this is impossible to enforce. Kids just sneak in. Meanwhile, adults look at the ratings to size up how much sex and violence they’re getting for their money.

So clearly, the word “warning” means nothing to the human race. The entertainment industry is wasting its time and money with parental advisory labels and theater admittance laws. That energy and funding could be better applied to making movies that don’t completely suck or funding bands that actually have talent.