This is what the "bad ideas" tag was made for

I recently learned there is a popular leisure activity called "ghost riding the whip," which was able to completely avoid my radar during its flight to prominence.

To ghost ride a whip one must put a car (a "whip" in hip-hop parlance) in neutral or idle, exit the car, and then perform a series of celebratory jigs on top of and around the still rolling vehicle.

A Youtube query reveals there are about a thousand videos dedicated to this pastime, which emerged from the Hyphy culture of the California Bay area.

Ghost riding the whip strikes me as about the dumbest thing ever conceptualized. It comes off as kind of wussy -- especially when compared to traditional daredevil vehicular behavior such as drag racing and chicken -- yet it still manages to be extraordinarily dangerous. It's like huffing paint thinner, only without the pleasurable high.

Here is my favorite video from Youtube's massive ghost riding cache. Not surprisingly, things end badly for the ghost riders. It's entirely possible the guy in the second clip died from his injuries. But, judging from the shape of the licences plates, he's a foreigner so it's OK to laugh.

I've said it once and I will say it again: If we want to stay competitive in the twenty-first century, America needs to do an even better job of exporting our bad habits . The good news is there seems to be as strong a market as ever for them.

I'm pretty sure the man pictured does have two legs, and the apparent stump is an illusion of the photograph. Although it would be spectacular if he had lost his leg in a previous ghost riding incident, yet continues with his passion undeterred.