] "If my child was in elementary school, I would welcome this with
] open arms and say, "please, please, tell me my kid got on the bus
] and got off the bus,"' said School Board chairwoman Jane Gallucci.

She latered added, "I mean come on, I the fucking School Board Chairwoman; my career is far more important than something so Donny-Reed-like as taking care of my child. I'd have to take some sort of an interest in his upbringing if I was to know if he got on the bus or not. I'd rather not even think twice about having my child figureprinted so then I know he is going to school. That saves me time of explaining things like how skipping school is wrong, or why he shouldn't talk with or ever go anywhere with strangers. God forbid having a kid would tak time out of my day to personally see him off in the morning, or getting a fellow students parent to see them off. All of these are stupid life lessions anyway. It damn time society finally takes some responsiblity in raising my child."

Parents these days suck ass. That's not teenage angst, thats from watching the knee-jerk that was Columbine.

Decius wrote:
] ] The Pinellas school system is ready to approve a new
] ] technology that uses student fingerprints to keep track
] ] of who is riding school buses.
]
] Children who grow up accustomed to this kind of surveillance
] on a daily basis will not question it when they are asked to
] do it as adults.

[ Jesus. Insert-standard-1984/brave new world/pkd-reference-here. This kind of bullshit has got to stop. "Freedom from" and "freedom to" are totally different things, dammit, and not enough people are interested in the fact that the kind of freedom from fear that all these measures claim to represent, simultaneously limit your freedom to make choices for yourself and live your life without being treated as a constant potential threat. What an outrage. And we, the idealists of our generation, are rapidly becoming the it-was-better-in-my-day fogies that current 4th graders are going to smugly ignore or maliciously taunt. Is it even possible to change minds? -k]

inignoct wrote:

] [ Jesus. Insert-standard-1984/brave new
] world/pkd-reference-here. This kind of bullshit has got to
] stop. "Freedom from" and "freedom to" are totally different
] things, dammit, and not enough people are interested in the
] fact that the kind of freedom from fear that all these
] measures claim to represent, simultaneously limit your freedom
] to make choices for yourself and live your life without being
] treated as a constant potential threat. ]

Its all fear man. The letter of the day is not "the only thing we have to fear..." We're afraid of boogeymen at our bus-stop. We're afraid of teenagers who wear black clothing. We're afraid of terrorists. And we react to that fear by throwing in the towel on the most simple personal freedoms. To be sure, there are real threats, and certainly we are handling them poorly.