I actually wish more places would make that kind of law. It would enable the people that need to be taken care of to get cared for. As it is now, if a person is mentally ill or has a substance abuse problem that has lead to them being homeless, there's nothing anyone can do about it. They can't be forced to receive mental health care against their will or to get treatment for their addiction. If they don't have family that can take power over their affairs, it's almost impossible to get them into the system and get them any aid. Making the homelessness itself an offense that they can be picked up for and mandated by court order to get help for could be a huge help to many. But it's one of those laws that sounds heartless on the surface. No one wants to be the lawmaker who has a headline with his name in it about "making being homeless illegal". If you think it through, you could see the compassion and sensibility in it, but if you just hear that little snippet, it sounds awful.
And I suspect the 10% of all business have been flash robbed statistic is a bit skewed by confusion,too. I bet lots of businesses who've been robbed by groups of people coming in at once to serve as a distraction for members of the group to steal might have mistakenly answered that they'd been flash robbed, too, if the question was asked vaguely enough or if they didn't really understand the flash mob concept. Like when I was a teen in the 90's, it was common enough for groups of 4 or 6 or so teens to go into a convenience store and make the group hard enough to watch all at once that a couple of them could steal while the cashier wasn't able to watch them all that several stores in areas with lots of teens around like near schools had to enact an "only two teens at a time" restriction. And while a bad thing, it's not nearly the same thing as a genuine flash mob robbery. But I could see some less web-savvy shop owners not understanding the difference and saying they'd been victim to flash robbery when it was really just old-school group distraction theft.
Interesting project. I'd like to see someone tackle it without the vegan variation, following the ration system the way a typical person/family of the era would have. But I'm thinking for best results they might should have started last year with planting a Victory Garden. And I'd like to see them work with some vintage recipes from that era,too. And it might be fun to see them tackle it with historically appropriate cooking equipment and such,too.
Interesting how in the Dark Knight movie, they play on that muddle of different origin stories with Heath Ledger's joker giving more than one story about where he got the scars.
I love the positivity. It's awesome. But I think Nick's right, with the formal and often less than pleasant nature of a lot of government interactions, something upbeat but just simple and polite and to the point might be better.
Some departments like the tourist department or the parks department or voter registration office could use the "great day" greeting and it would be very cool, both for callers and for the folks answering the phone. But I'm thinking for a lot of the offices a traditional greeting like "Thank you for calling the South Carolina Revenue Department. How can I help you today?" would be more appropriate.
And older callers might especially feel more comfortable with a more traditional greeting,too. I could see the odd new happy statement greeting rather than a plain declaration of whom you've reached and an offer for assistance being a bit confusing for folks used to old-fashioned phone routine. It would waste time to end up clarifying things. A whole lot of calls with the new greeting would end up started out with "Huh? Is this the DMV? I'm trying to get in touch with the DMV? Who is this?" rather than just quickly being able to get right to the meat of the conversation and to work on the customer service.
I once worked at a restaurant where we started a new telephone greeting that wasn't a basic "Thank you for calling X Restaurant, how may I help you?" and it was a nightmare. We abandoned it very quickly. It just frustrated customers and the frustrated customers lead to unhappy employees and everyone dreading answering the phone.
Great info and ideas in the article. I wish they hadn't written it in such a not-safe-for-work, public-sharing-unfriendly, uneducated sounding style. They could have pulled off informative and easy to understand and casual in style without having to have the tons of swearing.
I have a foul mouth,too, and cussing in general is fine with me, but that kind of language doesn't match up with the smart content of the article. It detracts from the source's feel of credibility and the sense of seriousness about the subject matter. It doesn't add anything valuable to the material at all. It just makes it so that instead of being able to share it on facebook where my friends and family and contacts can see it and learn some under-publicized truths about the film industry, I can't really feel comfortable about doing that because of the writing style. :(
I'm a metal fan, even used to be a metal musician. I use every sick day and vacation day I can squeeze in to go to shows, etc. But even I think this is utterly ridiculous.
It makes sense to me with the bulk of the crime in a lot of the cities being burglary. The daytime hours are when the highest number of people's homes are empty because the homeowners are at work. If someone wants to break into a house and steal stuff, they are most likely to pick when there's less chance of running into someone there and less chance of neighbors being home to notice and witness it.
While it wouldn't be great for everyone to just run around taking willy nilly every time life didn't go their way, it would be AWESOME for people who've experienced genuinely serious trauma that have exhausted other methods to try to get over it with little to no success. It should be used as a last resort kind of thing, but I could totally see it helping.
Someone I love was deeply traumatized as a teen and has even with years and years of therapy, even several long bouts at full fledged mental institutions, drugs, shock therapy, the whole nine yards, even though she's in her 40's, still can't live a normal adult life. If this drug could help her un-remember it would be truly life changing.
I could even see it being helpful even before trying more drastic traditional measures for kids that have been through something really awful. If a little one could be helped to un-remember the potentially seriously scarring event, they would never have to learn the maladjusted coping mechanisms and learn to live with fears and emotional issues that would have to be corrected later. They could just be quickly treated with the drug and move on with their lives undamaged.
Shame they can't easily prosecute the ones that left without paying. I can understand how you might not notice the lack of employees while you were shopping, even how you might still just go ahead and check out with the self-checkout registers. However, people know the groceries aren't free. They aren't just in the habit of strolling right out the front door without paying first. They knew they were stealing. They deserve to be punished. If it were a home rather than a business, it wouldn't seem okay that they're getting off without consequences. Just because a door's open doesn't mean "Come on in. Load up whatever you want and take it.".
Barbie gets a lot of unfair criticism. Barbies are DOLLS. They're not real. They make no claims of being representations of what the female form should look like. We don't expect other humanoid toys to set some sort of realistic body image standard. We don't worry that boys are getting the wrong idea because Optimist Prime's actual body would be 30 feet tall or that they're going to kill themselves trying to be huge and muscular and green like the Incredible Hulk action figure. We don't worry that girls who play with a Dora the Explorer doll are going to be depressed that their heads aren't twice the size of their body and shaped like footballs. We didn't worry that cabbage patch kids were going to make kids want to look like that or that playing with a fairy doll is going to make kids depressed they can't grow wings or a playing with a Disney Mermaid Princess doll is going to make them sad they can't grow a tail. Sounds to me like too many grown-ups have issues of their own and are assigning this little girl's plastic plaything way more power than it actually has.
It's a shame that the discussion of the very very real issue of negative body image and eating disorders gets wrapped up so often in this doll. It's a red herring that distracts from talking about or dealing with the real sources of that sort of trouble. I guess it's just easier to be angry at and worried about and talking about a doll than it is to talk about the real stuff.
Plus, targeting Barbie trivializes the truth about eating disorders and body image. Talking about it like anorexic girls are killing themselves over wanting to look like a cheap plastic dolly they played with as little girls is insulting to anyone who's ever struggled with the reality of those issues. If only it were as simple as changing Barbie's measurements or replacing her with a doll that looks more like an average healthy woman, but alas, there's a WHOLE lot more to it. Making the young women that are struggling with a serious condition seem even crazier, like they're totally freaked out about something as stupid as a toy, is just awful.
And I could see it being a good compromise for folks that are worried about showing emotion in front of others or want to say something in private to the deceased. Being able to do it from the "privacy" of your own car would help you be able to get the closure you want without the face to face with other mourners issue.
Some departments like the tourist department or the parks department or voter registration office could use the "great day" greeting and it would be very cool, both for callers and for the folks answering the phone. But I'm thinking for a lot of the offices a traditional greeting like "Thank you for calling the South Carolina Revenue Department. How can I help you today?" would be more appropriate.
And older callers might especially feel more comfortable with a more traditional greeting,too. I could see the odd new happy statement greeting rather than a plain declaration of whom you've reached and an offer for assistance being a bit confusing for folks used to old-fashioned phone routine. It would waste time to end up clarifying things. A whole lot of calls with the new greeting would end up started out with "Huh? Is this the DMV? I'm trying to get in touch with the DMV? Who is this?" rather than just quickly being able to get right to the meat of the conversation and to work on the customer service.
I once worked at a restaurant where we started a new telephone greeting that wasn't a basic "Thank you for calling X Restaurant, how may I help you?" and it was a nightmare. We abandoned it very quickly. It just frustrated customers and the frustrated customers lead to unhappy employees and everyone dreading answering the phone.
I have a foul mouth,too, and cussing in general is fine with me, but that kind of language doesn't match up with the smart content of the article. It detracts from the source's feel of credibility and the sense of seriousness about the subject matter. It doesn't add anything valuable to the material at all. It just makes it so that instead of being able to share it on facebook where my friends and family and contacts can see it and learn some under-publicized truths about the film industry, I can't really feel comfortable about doing that because of the writing style. :(
I'm pretty sure if I have to go to hell, it will be 10 grade Algebra, for eternity.
Someone I love was deeply traumatized as a teen and has even with years and years of therapy, even several long bouts at full fledged mental institutions, drugs, shock therapy, the whole nine yards, even though she's in her 40's, still can't live a normal adult life. If this drug could help her un-remember it would be truly life changing.
I could even see it being helpful even before trying more drastic traditional measures for kids that have been through something really awful. If a little one could be helped to un-remember the potentially seriously scarring event, they would never have to learn the maladjusted coping mechanisms and learn to live with fears and emotional issues that would have to be corrected later. They could just be quickly treated with the drug and move on with their lives undamaged.
It's a shame that the discussion of the very very real issue of negative body image and eating disorders gets wrapped up so often in this doll. It's a red herring that distracts from talking about or dealing with the real sources of that sort of trouble. I guess it's just easier to be angry at and worried about and talking about a doll than it is to talk about the real stuff.
Plus, targeting Barbie trivializes the truth about eating disorders and body image. Talking about it like anorexic girls are killing themselves over wanting to look like a cheap plastic dolly they played with as little girls is insulting to anyone who's ever struggled with the reality of those issues. If only it were as simple as changing Barbie's measurements or replacing her with a doll that looks more like an average healthy woman, but alas, there's a WHOLE lot more to it. Making the young women that are struggling with a serious condition seem even crazier, like they're totally freaked out about something as stupid as a toy, is just awful.