Goodness sakes, it's work, it's work!

[silveradept]

Yep. Lots of stuff arrived all at once, so I'm swarmed and swamped all at once and slowly fighting my way out of the paper pile. And then the rest of you pile on with additional material of interest to me and yourselves. You're definitely keeping me busy. It'll be nice to have access at home so that I can fight off the hordes at all hours.

Anyway, onward. Much like expulsion for wearing a T-shirt, an activist is suffering from a broken leg and an assault charge, apparently for wearing a "I love the people of Iraq" button. Again, one side of the story, but from the sounds of things, the guards decided that a button was enough of a disruption to bar someone from entering. For similar blind enforcement of rules or the perception thereof, enjoy the accoutns of holy water from Lourdes being confiscated due to terrorism restrictions.

Just trying to live a standard American life means taking on great debts, according to Dr. Housing Bubble. And it's on things like cars, houses, and college education - things that are fairly required for people to live and enjoy. What happened such that "living within our means" now almost requires large amounts of debts?

With a missing baby alert in a Wal-Mart, a woman describes her account of security stopping her from leaving and apparently attempting to take her baby away. As noted, if the security actually made motions to take away the child from the mother, that's stupidity. If it was just trying to confirm that it was not the missing child, then it's an equally embarrassing situation for both parties, I suspect. Still, don't try to separate children and mothers, really. Behind the Counter offers more insight into just how bad the matter looks for everyone involved.

Going international, Russia is testing a new, bigger bomb. And then Putin replaces his Prime Minster. And finally, Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, is resigning his position. So what's going on over there now? The other side of the country seems to be doing all sorts of mysterious stuff.

And above all, Be not afraid. Don't panic. For as much as some people really do believe that America will become the bastion of the next Caliphate, remember that the Guide entry on Earth consists of two very important words. "Mostly harmless." It'll be nice if we can live up to such billing. And try not to get offended and cut part of a comedian's acceptance speech because she's making fun of the way most people do their acceptance speeches.

For those still interested in tracking new developments in the "Just what gets you TOSsed from LJ again?" department - dark_christian has two posts, first a denied request to remove communities that advocate abusive corporal punishment using Biblical justifications, and the follow-up, where it appears that there's an admission that the Abuse volunteers do not have someone trained in law in their group.

Also possibly related, Brad, founder of LJ, is leaving/has left the company, to which insomnia says that Brad left LJ to the wolves. Things may get better or worse or altogether stranger before anything is resolved at all about anything at all.

Comments

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

Man, what a batch of stories! The wolrd is full of morons!!!

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

And don’t think we haven’t had any historical warning. Let us take a look at some famous credit quotes:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
William Shakespeare (Hamlet 1:3)

BWAHAHAHAA!!!!!

[silveradept]

I suspect, though, most people only remember that Polonius dies (Spoiler of the 15th century! Hamlet kills Polonius!), even if only by accident, and thus all his advice is pretty useless.

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

Eek, that's right! Well, the Merchant of Venice shows another lending scheme gone horribly awry. ;)

[silveradept]

But Antonio's ships all come in at the end of the play, so instead of being a horrible failure and ruining himself, he actually manages to succeed even more. And Bassanio, the borrower, marries into money, so he can pay his debts, too. It's actually not a very good story about the bad consequences of lending.

(Also, spoiler of the 17th century is Hamlet, not the 15th. I'm off by a couple centuries. Blame the American schooling system.)

[ldragoon.livejournal.com]

Yeah. . .I just get all hung up on the pound of flesh thing. I know he gets off in the end but still. . .BRRRRR!! That gives me nightmares still.

[silveradept]

Eh. It's more that Shylock's system of punishment hearkens to earlier times... or some of the contemporary times, and a little bit even into the future of Shakespeare's time. If anything, that play's about getting too attached to anything, be it daughters, ducats, ships, or the portrait of Portia. Might be against borrowing on the sense of "Never get so far in over your head that you have to visit a loan shark to get you out."

[uncle-pervy.livejournal.com]

As much as I like "Venice," "Othello," and "Hamlet" I'd actually much prefer "Titus Andronicus." It's "Death Wish" with Charles Bronson centuries before he was even born. God I loved watching it at Stratford, Canada back in summer of 2000.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Holy crap! Way to go Wal-Mart. The thing is, babies really don't have any type of ID for them, other than having mum carry around a birth certificate. Even for babies and children to travel, if they're under the age of ten, they go without ID or they are listed on their mother's passport. I wonder if soon there will be required ID for kids to be carted around by the parents - or somehow attached to the kids. Also, how do you lose a BABY in a store? I mean, I can understand a toddler/young child wandering off on their own, but a baby? How's that for bad parenting on the part of the parent of the missing child to just walk away from their grocery cart that has their child in it? Heck, I've probably seen women more possessive of their carts that hold their purses than that parent had apparently been!

I also wonder how an ID card for a child would work, anyway. a photo and listing the height/weight could be pretty misleading, considering the rate some kids grow at. And how would you attach ID to a child anyway? Younger children certainly don't carry around wallets and purses (well, okay, little girls carry purses, but those usually are for pretend purposes and nine times out of ten probably contain rocks and a few pennies).

It's no wonder parents are so possessive of their children.

[silveradept]

The ID would probably attach the same way it does at a hospital - with a bracelet of some sort. Of course, anything that can be attached can be detached, and unless we feel like putting barcodes or RFIDs in our babies, there's probably no way of positiviely uniquely idnetifying babies.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Please don't give the government any ideas. I could see it become mandatory to put a microchip in your child, the same way you can for your cats and dogs.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Wasn't that one of the proposed ID ideas? Putting RFID tags into people?

[silveradept]

I can see it becoming mandatory for adults as well, and possibly having one's commercial and marketing data, like credit numbers and such, also being tied into it as a way of making sure that everyone is safe and watched over. Might even be the natural extension of REAL ID.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

*grumble* Real ID can kiss my arse. Such a stupid idea.