Rantings of a New Yorker

A man was asked by Middlesbrough police for his camera license, despite there being no reason to stop him other than a flimsy excuse.

In the video, the police claim they have a right under the terrorism act to ask to look at his pictures. They also claimed that, because they don’t know who he is, they have to look at the photos to make sure he is who he says he is. You can hear that the policeman is stumbling to find a reason to justify stopping this man so he can look at the photos.

Considering that half of the UK’s councils use the terrorism act and other anti-terrorism laws to harass people who fill their garbage bins too full, this shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

Apparently, the United Kingdom is unhappy that the Australians beat them to setting up their own massive firewalls, so much so, that they now want to name and shame web producers of offensive and obscene content.

Politicians are ready to introduce league tables naming and shaming the speed with which internet service providers take down offensive material.

The culture minister, Barbara Follett, and her Tory shadow, Ed Vaizey, have backed the idea that web providers must be embarrassed into dealing with violent, sexually explicit web content.

Follett said she wants to see the pre-screening of material on sites such as YouTube, as occurs at present on MySpace. She admitted there was growing chaos out there on the internet, and order needed to be brought.

Apparently, Barbara Follett has been living under a rock for the past twenty years.  There has always been chaos, violence and sexually explicit content on the web.  It’s not going to go anywhere just because she wants to regulate certain parts of it.  Whatever blocks she intends to make will be circumvented.

Follett warned: “We must teach children of the dangers of the internet. It is sad to make children more scared than interested, but fortunately the internet is so interesting that children tend to overcome their fear.”

Yes, you moron.  This is the point exactly.  There is scary stuff everywhere in life.  Children will overcome their fears, use their brains, and move on.  You are the one making children scared of the Internet, not people who make websites with explicit content.  Educate them and you do not have to worry about ID cards to access the Internet.

“We need the service providers to come forward and show that they are the sort of responsible organisations whose services we can trust to our children.”

ISPs already do this.  They already work with law enforcement over issues of child pornography, bullying, etc.  There isn’t a need to regulate the Internet further.

She also said she saw “some value in some form of age identity card for the internet. It is useful when it comes to alcohol and cigarettes and it is certainly useful when it comes to buying video games and other material on the internet.”

Really?  I guess she’s never seen anyone get someone else to buy for them.  She’s probably never seen anyone with a fake ID either.  This won’t change just because it’s on the Internet.

She added parents needed “control software to communicate automatically with websites’ age verification systems to prevent children from signing up to sites with false dates of birth.”

No they don’t.  Parents don’t need software to tell them what they can and can’t do with their kids.

She said she was interested in some form of “age identification card”, or requiring banks to specify on credit card statements that the card had been used to access internet sites or games, so parents could be warned of their child’s activities.

If your child is accessing Internet sites with your credit card, it is not the fault of the Internet or web sites.  You are responsible.  You are the bad parent.

These people really need to stay far away from the Internet until they have been thoroughly educated on how it works.  Even then, I’d be reluctant to let them come back and try to regulate the Internet.  Governments should never be in the business of regulating culture, yet, we have seen many times in history, where they do just that.  The end result is a rich underground of art, music, and literature.

Take your marriage private.  There’s really no need to have the state intervene when it comes to marriage.  Read a good article on the history of marriage and why it should be private.

Rethinking Schools Online has an interactive map of the Middle East and Africa where you can test your knowledge of geography.  They also have a few other educational games that are just for fun.

If you want something a little more challenging, you can visit sporcle and try to name all the countries in the world in under 15 minutes.  Sporcle also has many other challenging and fun games to play.

Some time ago, Woodbury Elementary School stopped reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  No one remembers when it happen, but several people in town now want the recitation returned to daily school life.  There are only 810 residents in the town of Woodbury and a bitter debate has ensued over the restoration of the pledge.

But efforts to restore them have erupted into a bitter dispute in this tiny (pop. 810) Vermont town, with school officials blocking the exercise from classrooms amid concerns that it holds nonparticipating children up to scorn.

I can personally attest to this being true.  While I don’t  live in Vermont, I do live in a small town and work in an elementary school.  The children at school do look at the nonparticipating students as weird and think that they should just say the pledge because you’re not patriotic or godly enough if you don’t.

The controversy here, however, is where and when to recite the pledge as opposed to whether it should be in school at all.

School officials agreed to resume the pledge as a daily exercise, but not in the classroom.

…starting last week, a sixth grade student was assigned to go around to the four classrooms before classes started, gathering up anyone who wanted to say it and then walking them up creaky wooden steps to a second-floor gymnasium, where he led them in the pledge.  About half the students chose to participate…

Tedesco, 55, a retired U.S. Marine Corps major, and others who signed his petitions didn’t like that solution, calling it disruptive to routine and inappropriate because it put young children in the position of having to decide between pre-class play time and leaving the classroom to say the Pledge.

Uhm, if you have to recite the pledge in class, you will also have to decide between your pre-class play time and reciting the pledge.  Regardless of whether you recited it in the classroom or in a gymnasium, you’re still going to have to make a choice.

“Saying the Pledge in the classroom is legal, convenient and traditional,” said Tedesco. “Asking kindergarten through sixth graders who want to say the Pledge to leave their classrooms to do so is neither convenient nor traditional.”

What Mr. Tedesco really means to say is that it’s convenient, so let’s just do it in the classroom and not worry about who is offended or feels left out.  For the record, when I was in elementary school (1975-1982), the entire school recited the pledge in the gymnasium before school.  If you didn’t want to stand or recite the pledge, you didn’t have to.  My elementary school still practices this each morning, only it’s now done in the cafeteria/gymnasium.

On Friday, the routine changed again.  Just before 8 a.m., Martin herded all the school’s students — and a handful of adults — into a cramped foyer that adjoins the first-floor classrooms and told sixth-grader Nathan Gilbert, 12, to lead them in the Pledge.

The principal claims to have done this so that it is not as obvious as to who is and who isn’t reciting the pledge.  Everyone is not going to one location with some reciting the pledge, while others abstain.

This may be the best solution of all.  Most elementary kids do not even understand the pledge or the ramifications of the words in the pledge.  The ones I work with every day, while claiming that I’m not patriotic for not reciting it, are also very understanding of the seventh-day adventists who are not allowed to recite it.  As an adult, the thinking of the students boggles my mind, but makes sense to them.  If this Vermont school has come up with a way to make everyone, except for one parent, happy, then they should stick by their decision.  You can be patriotic and love your country without blind obedience and indoctrination.

Considering the fact that the US government is outsourcing the making of our passports to foreign countries, VeinID might be the government’s next choice for identification.  The scary part?  I don’t want some attacker to have another option of dismembering me.

Finger vein authentication, introduced widely by Japanese banks in the last two years, is claimed to be the fastest and most secure biometric method. Developed by Hitachi, it verifies a person’s identity based on the lattice work of minute blood vessels under the skin.

Disney World uses a similar system and has done so for a number of years, which is why I will never visit Disney World again.  I have no idea how long they keep the information, who keeps it, or why they even justify using it to begin with.  The same goes for the government.  My biometrics are my own.  Stop trying to take them away from me.

Gardasil’s cervical cancer vaccine just can’t stay out of the limelight.  It’s hailed as a big breakthrough in the fight against cervical cancer, yet continues down a controversial path for several reasons.  Now, the USA wants to force new immigrants to have the vaccine.

Not everyone’s happy over the federal requirement that all new female immigrants ages 11 to 26 receive the vaccine, which protects against cervical cancer. The new requirement, which went into effect August 1, will affect more than 130,000 immigrants a year. Cervical cancer causes about 4,000 deaths annually.

That’s 4,000 deaths worldwide.

The vaccine is expensive, costing several hundred dollars for the required three doses. So far, about a quarter of U.S. teens (about 2.5 million girls) have been given at least one of the three shot series in Gardasil’s first full year of distribution, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Now, immigrants will be required to receive a vaccine that’s not even required in this country.

“Through an interesting quirk, now all these immigrant girls and young women will be protected against cancer. Immigrants will be better protected against cancer than our own population.”

No, it’s not an interesting quirk.  It’s forcing immigrants to pay large fees for a vaccine that’s not required for its own citizens, isn’t completely necessary, and isn’t worth it for a large amount of the women who are going to be forced to take it.

Young women have died after taking this vaccine, yet illegal immigrants run free with many diseases and virii, including TB, but we are going to subject people who come here legally with a monetary burden of getting this vaccine or not being allowed to stay?  Where does this make sense?  This vaccine should be a CHOICE not a mandatory step towards citizenship.

Under new British plans to reduce teenage pregnancy rates, the government plans to pressure girls as young as 13 to have contraceptive jabs and implants.

Ministers have ordered council and health chief executives to increase the uptake of “long-acting” contraception in teen pregnancy “hot spots”.

The government also wants more school-based clinics to administer the jabs, which can make girls infertile for up to three months.

Teenagers can receive the injections or implants without their parents’ knowledge.

So, teenage pregnancy rates are up and the government’s solution is to pressure young girls to take an injection without their parents’ consent?  Why are the boys not being subjected to the same sort of tactics?

Ministers, again, have not thought this plan through.  Instead of curbing sexual promiscuity, this plan will only increase it.  You might lower the rates of pregnancy, but you will increase STDs.  The government is, essentially, replacing one problem with another.

Dr Hans Christian Raabe, a GP and medical coordinator of the Council for Health and Wholeness, a Christian organisation, said: “There are concerns that using them over long periods might have an impact on bone growth. The other issue is it gives an impression of safety that is not there. Girls will think ‘Nothing can happen to me because I can’t get pregnant.’ But the rates of sexually transmitted diseases are frightening. There has been an explosion and yet young people are given a false sense of security.

Better sex education and changes in behavioral are what’s needed to help reduce teenage pregnancy.  Forcing injections on young girls is not the answer.  The UK might also try to actually educate the other side of teen pregnancy, the boys, and force some consequences on them, mainly child support, and these teens might think twice before doing the horizontal mambo.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Jaffa Cakes, even if they are hard to come by in America, but they are, in no way, nutritious.  They are empty, but tasty, calories.

A new survey in the United Kingdom, however, has found that 1 in 10 parents think that Jaffa Cakes count towards a healthy diet.

One in 10 parents believes that Jaffa Cakes, chips and cola count towards a child’s five-a-day.

In a survey into family eating habits, one in five also thought that fruit-flavoured sweets, spaghetti hoops and orange squash counted towards the daily target fruit and vegetable intake.

Furthermore, one in 20 parents thought that oranges or bananas did not count. Some 15 per cent said they did not think it was their job to teach their children about healthy eating, believing this to be the role of grandparents, teachers, doctors and celebrity chefs.

How did society get this way?  It’s now the job of TV (celebrity chefs) to teach healthy eating habits?  If it’s the grandparents’ job, then why did those grandparents, who are your parents, teach you the right way to eat?  Is it really that hard to say no to a child?  Did something happen in the last 20 years that we completely forgot what a healthy diet was?  Did we forget that a healthy diet leads to a healthy kid and less trips to the doctors?

Overall, in the poll carried out for the canned food company Green Giant, only one in five families ensures that their children eat the recommended five portions a day and one in 20 children have diets totally free of fruit or vegetables.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia found that only just over half of the children reported eating fruit or veg every day.

Only 50 per cent of boys and 57 per cent of girls say they get at least one portion on a daily basis, far less than the recommended five-a-day.

Just 41 per cent of the children said that they had at least two servings on a daily basis.

I think I’m getting old because I just can’t understand how parents think like this.  If you have a piece of fruit with each meal, you’re already at 3 servings.  Have an apple as a snack after school and there’s a fourth.  Oh, wait, it’s cheaper to buy a candy bar and shove it down your kids’ throat because they seem to think it’s tastier than fruit.

The announcement comes just days after the Government faced controversy over plans to pay fat people to walk their children to school.

Why?  Why do we have to pay people to walk their fat asses and their fat kids to school?  How about just making them walk?  I didn’t get paid to do my chores as a child.  If I didn’t do them, privileges (TV, playing with friends, etc.) were taken away.  Stop paying people to do what they should be  be doing anyway.

A pilot project in Manchester will offer vouchers which can be used to buy healthy food and sports equipment as rewards to people who become more active.

Again, why?  You DO NOT need vouchers to buy healthy food.  I have a very limited food budget, yet I eat healthier than people with 3-4 times the food budget as me.  If you actually eat a serving at dinner, instead of 6 or 7, you’ll have plenty of money to buy healthy food.  You should not be rewarding people for becoming responsible with their money and their life choices.

Jaffa Cakes are a nice, tasty, and occasional treat.  You should never make the mistake of thinking it’s a fruit and let yourself or your children eat a lot of them.  I guess this is why Britain is happily embracing the nanny state.

The View From 90 is a new blog, written by a 90 year old.  So far, there is only one post, however, that post is very interesting, informative, and makes you think.  I really hope this lady keeps blogging because I’d love to hear more about her life and insights on the world.