First is this article about some English yobs vandalising a 'holy' tree. The headline claims the tree was 2000 years old and planted by Joseph of Arimathea(the bible says this guy donated his tomb to Jesus) but a little bit of reading shows it wasn't anywhere ear that old, the tree has been regrown from cuttings at various times throughout its history and there appears to be no evidence supporting the 2000 year claim although its predecessor has been fully grown since at least the 1600s when Oliver Cromwell and his goons hacked it down. While the tree is an oddity in that it blooms twice a year and supposedly none of its offspring grown from seed do calling it a 2000 year old holy tree is pushing it.
Anyway the point is as far as I am concerned it is just a tree but given its cultural significance the vandalism was almost certainly aimed at pissing of the local Christians, and damaging monuments is just a real dick move.
The other article that interests me is this, it seems that shoppers in wal-marts across America are going to be subject to the short video clip at the bottom of the linked article. This is part of the 'See something, say something' campaign which is getting progressively more retarded. In an attempt to fight terrorism the public are being encouraged to report any suspicious behaviours they see. Sounds sensible right? Wrong, very wrong. First no information is provided to discern a local eccentric from someone planning to vaporise a mall. Next time you are out on the streets, or shopping or whatever keep an eye out for anything suspicious and keep a tally of how many you see. Are those people all terrorists, no, are they all criminals, very unlikely. Now imagine the time it would take for you to report all these events to a police officer. Now imagine the amount of police time taken up if everyone reported every suspicious event they saw. Flooding the police force with false positives is probably the most ineffective way of fighting terrorism imaginable especially since government agencies are already swamped with people reporting possible suspects. Not only does it waste massive amounts of police time it keeps people afraid, then again a fearful population will make rash decisions when it comes to a security/privacy and freedom tradeoff.
"He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither" and will often lose both.
Benjamin Franklin
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