Don't be Silly
of course we trust the gubbmint
Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.
Why would anyone think otherwise?
...the FBI is investigating the school district’s webcam program, and district spokesman Doug Young suggests without claiming that Harriton High School student Blake J. Robbins’ webcam was activated only because the laptop had been reported stolen—in accordance with an established policy. The boy was charged with an undisclosed infraction based on an image the school picked up from his webcam. District superintendent Christopher W. McGinley, in an orotund statement, defends the program while canceling it. And just to make clear that we’re still in high school, Master Robbins appears to have gotten in trouble when he was photographed eating Mike and Ikes.
Re the Prohibition-era spiking, elsewhere someone with a [tangential] need for ethanol noted that the government is doing much the same with it - without the additives being either colored or selected to at least taste bad. So if you have a use for “pure” ethanol (seems it has industrial and chem-lab applications) you need a Federal alcohol license…
------
Re the webcam thing, seems the school may have acted legally, since it retained legal ownership. Just stupidly. And yes, the policy is to activate the cam only if stolen/lst report filed: I have yet to see the school claim to have such a report regarding this particular computer, though there may have been one.
While on this topic, the next time you go to a page that includes a Flash® advertisement, right-click and go down the options: last time I did, one of the defaults was to allow the advertiser turn on your webcam, if you had one…Posted by on 02/23/10 at 07:40 AM
Next entry: Timing is the Essence of Comity
Previous entry: Moving in the Right Direction
