And lo on Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:46:59 +0100, Jim Henderson  

<nos### [at] nospamcom> did spake, saying:

> On Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:25:39 +0100, Phil Cook wrote:
>
>>> LOL, I've actually seen a photo of Brown doctored up to make him loo
k
>>> like Stalin.  I think it was on The Daily Show....
>>
>> We're even getting forced labour now... sort of
>> http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/unemployed-to-be-used-for-

> soup--200807211110/
>
> <shaking head>  What's the world coming to?

Hey if it means more jobs in the soup processing industry ;-)

>>> photo capabilities, even though the phone isn't being used.  If the
>>> member is an IT person who is REQUIRED to carry a phone as part of
>>> their employment and the company provides a phone with a camera buil
t
>>> into it, that creates a problem.
>>
>> It's an attitude shift "I'm not being paid enough to deal with the
>> applications of this rule I'm just going to enforce it" instead of
>> jobsworth perhaps rulesworth? Pratchettism from Going Postal regardin
g
>> the ability to cripple the 'clacks' system - In the old days the head
 of
>> the tower would strip the message from the list knowing they were doi
ng
>> the right thing and that the people back at Head Office would agree; 
not
>> now.
>
> Oh, yeah, I understand why people take "the lazy way out".  There's a
> real sense that as a society, we've become lazy, particularly in the
> areas of applying common sense to things and in behaving ethically.
<snip>
>>> kids having fun at the pool make one a criminal or a paedophile.  It
's
>>> the pattern of *behaviour* that does.
>>
>> But patterns are hard to discern and as per above I'm not paid to thi
nk,
>> so better just to go for the option that you can't be disciplined/fir
ed
>> for "Just obeying the rules!".
>
> Yeah.  It is a "society becoming lazy" thing in my mind.

But what's the cause, is it bottom-up or top-down (or neither or both). 
 

Personally I think it's top-down - you can't perform this 2 minute job  

without filling in H&S forms 11b, 121c, and 2d and then submiting them f
or  

processing; if you just do the damn thing you will be reprimanded if  

anyone finds out because if anything happens who's held liable dum-dum-d
uh!

>>> But as a society (and I think this is a western-societial problem
>>> mostly), we are tending towards the type of "shoot first, ask questi
ons
>>> later" Zero-Tolerance policies that remove common sense and thinking

>>> from the process.
>>>
>>> For an excellent essay on ZT problems, if you haven't seen it, have 
a
>>> look over at http://www.thisistrue.com/zt.html
>>
>> Bloody hellski. The trouble with such 'laws' is how they equate thing
s -
>> water pistol = firearm, asking a boy if he likes you = sexual
>> harassment. I assume you've read Roger MacBride Allen's Caliban deali
ng
>> with Three Law Robots, such a robot doesn't distinguish between one
>> human being attacked by another and someone standing on a tall buildi
ng;
>> both are dangerous. As robots are omnipresent humans began to fail to

>> distinguish between these dangers too.
>
> Yep, that is the biggest problem.  There have been stories about kids
> being expelled from school for having prescription medications because

> the ZT policy of the school is "no drugs".

Except from the teachers point of view in this case what's to stop a  

student putting drugs in a medication container, how could they tell the
  

difference? Easier (there's that word again) just to ban the lot.

>  We're not talking about
> minimum-wage workers making those kinds of decisions - school
> *administration* people saying "we're not going to apply common sense
> here", as if there's a difference between inhaling from an albuterol
> inhaler (for asthma) and huffing from a can of compressed air.
>
> It's absolutely *ridiculous*.

Yeah that is ridiculous. I think I've still got buried somewhere in the 
 

mounds my old cap-gun an item I would now NEVER hand-down as a toy and  

cannot be bought anymore as it's modelled on a real gun. Heh crooks shou
ld  

start pimping their weaponry with plastic fins and day-glo accessories  

that way the government would have an excuse to ban anything that looked
  

like a gun.

>>> (And BTW, I do subscribe to the 'premium' TRUE subscription and have

>>> for years - it's a very good and often quite funny newsletter - even

>>> the free one is quite good, but I like the additional stories in the

>>> premium edition as well.  I think you'd enjoy it, Phil)
>>
>> I do like the tag line.
>
> Each story he does comes with a tag line - it's one of the things that

> makes it fun to read.  Another reason for the premium subscription as
> well is that you can participate in a monthly "tagline challenge" wher
e
> the readers send in suggestions for taglines for one story.

Well I meant "Truth is Stranger than Fiction because Fiction Has to Make
  

Sense"

-- 

Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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