Kerby Anderson "Have you ever heard of the verb “nestoring? I had never heard about it until Jonah Goldberg wrote a column about it. The word comes from Dr. John Nestor, who even has an entry in Wikipedia about him and the reason someone coined the term to describe him.
"Back in the 1980s, transit officials in Washington tried to figure out why they were having traffic problems on the Beltway. It turns out that Dr. Nestor would get in the left lane and set his cruise control to 55 mph. This forced cars behind him to merge right and create a bottleneck. He would not move to the right for drivers behind him. He asked: “Why should I inconvenience myself for someone who wants to speed?”
"He became a somewhat of a celebrity when he wrote a letter to the Washington Post explaining what he was doing on the highway and why. The newspaper received lots of angry letters to the editor in response and led to the coining of the term “nestoring.”
"Dr. Nestor was also a regulator for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. While he was in the cardio-renal-pulmonary unit, he approved no new drugs. None, he reasoned, were worth the risk. That was his philosophy. If you don’t approve of any drugs, then you are guaranteed that no harmful drugs will go out on the market. Of course, you also will be keeping back drugs that could be beneficial, even life-saving, to the general public.
"This was the philosophy of John Nestor, which came to be known by the verb “nestoring.” Don’t take any risks. Keep a firm conformity to laws, standards, and regulations regardless of the larger consequences.
"We see so many examples of “nestoring” today in government regulations that strive to make the world 100 percent safe. That is impossible in a fallen world. There will always be risk and we will have to weigh them against the benefits. Unfortunately, people who believe in “nestoring” seem to be missing what we used to call common sense"
"Back in the 1980s, transit officials in Washington tried to figure out why they were having traffic problems on the Beltway. It turns out that Dr. Nestor would get in the left lane and set his cruise control to 55 mph. This forced cars behind him to merge right and create a bottleneck. He would not move to the right for drivers behind him. He asked: “Why should I inconvenience myself for someone who wants to speed?”"He became a somewhat of a celebrity when he wrote a letter to the Washington Post explaining what he was doing on the highway and why. The newspaper received lots of angry letters to the editor in response and led to the coining of the term “nestoring.”
"Dr. Nestor was also a regulator for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. While he was in the cardio-renal-pulmonary unit, he approved no new drugs. None, he reasoned, were worth the risk. That was his philosophy. If you don’t approve of any drugs, then you are guaranteed that no harmful drugs will go out on the market. Of course, you also will be keeping back drugs that could be beneficial, even life-saving, to the general public.
"We see so many examples of “nestoring” today in government regulations that strive to make the world 100 percent safe. That is impossible in a fallen world. There will always be risk and we will have to weigh them against the benefits. Unfortunately, people who believe in “nestoring” seem to be missing what we used to call common sense"
