Random News Stories

[Leo Enticknap]

From The Independent, emphasis mine:

Popular free audio editing tool Audacity has quietly updated its terms and conditions so that it can sell user data to third-party companies and share it “with our main office in Russia”.

The update, which happened on 2 July 2021, means that Audacity will now collect information about users’ operating system, their country (through their IP address), their CPU, and any other data “necessary for law enforcement, litigation and authorities’ requests”.

For “a calendar day”, IP addresses will be “stored in an identifiable way” before being hashed or made anonymous; however, an unencrypted address could be a pathway to finding a users’ name, phone number, and address, the geolocation of the computer, and in some cases further personal characteristics including “political inclinations, state of health, sexuality, [and] religious sentiments”, according to a study conducted in 2013 by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Audacity will share this personal data with its staff and law enforcement and government agents, or “other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary” as well as “potential buyer[s] … in connection with any proposed purchase, merger, or acquisition”.

Users’ personal data is stored on servers in the European Economic Area, but Audacity says that it is “occasionally required to share your personal data with our main office in Russia and our external counsel in the USA”. It says that personal data “receives an adequate level of protection in accordance with the GDPR.”

Audacity also forbids users under the age of 13 from using it. “If you are under 13 years old, please do not use the App”, the new terms and conditions state; however, this appears to be in conflict with its GPL license, which states that software must be available for free to all users.

Muse Group, which purchased Audacity in May 2021, did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent before time of publication.

“It is no wonder that the latest update is being likened to spyware with the volume of data being acquired from customers. The recent sale of the software highlights how customer data is increasingly more important to software owners and it reflects the true business model of many companies”, Jake Moore, Cybersecurity Specialist at global cybersecurity company ESET, told The Independent.

“When they share, analyse and profit from personal data collection, companies take a gamble that they will only lose a small number of accounts owned by privacy conscious users. The more people realise how important it is to keep limit the sharing of their sensitive information, the more companies will be forced into thinking twice when taking such data.”

I used an older version for capturing and doing light touch processing (mainly applying historic EQ curves) of 78 RPM records, until I decided to invest in Diamond Cut a couple of years ago. I'll definitely steer clear of Audacity now.

[Martin McCaffery]

Variety

European Cinema Giant Vue Fined $1 Million For Death of U.K. Film-Goer in 2018
Naman RamachandranJul 20, 2021 8:17am PT

A court in Birmingham, U.K., has fined cinema giant Vue Entertainment £750,000 ($1 million) in the verdict around a 2018 incident where a man was crushed to death under a cinema chair.

In March 2018, 24-year-old Ateeq Rafiq died after his head and neck got crushed under a seat while searching for his keys at Birmingham’s Star City cinema, a Vue property. His wife Ayesha Sardar tried to pull the chair’s motorized footrest off Rafiq’s neck, but did not succeed. He was revived by CPR at the scene but died of brain injuries a week later, on March 16.

At an inquest held in 2019 it was revealed that the force which came down on Rafiq’s head was 3/4th of a ton. The seat was missing a bar which would have allowed Rafiq to be released manually.

In April 2021, Vue Cinemas admitted to two charges under the Health and Safety at Work Act, for “failing to ensure that persons not in their employment are not exposed to risk to their health or safety” and for “failing to make a suitable and sufficient risk assessment.”

Sentencing was deferred to July 20, when the Birmingham Crown Court announced the fine.


“It is obviously positive mitigation on behalf of this company that they have no previous convictions or matters coming before the court,” Judge Heidi Kubik QC said. “They have a very positive health and safety record.”

“It is conceded that clearly a number of members of the public were exposed to the same risk of harm,” the judge added. “The complete lack of a risk assessment was a significant cause of the actual harm that resulted.”

The death was “an accident that never should have happened,” the judge said.

Variety has reached out to the Vue group for comment.

Vue has 91 cinemas across the U.K. and Ireland, with over 870 screens. It is is part of the largest cinema group in Europe, Vue International.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...aguire-funeral

‘The most disturbing liturgy ever’: Irish burglar gets highly charged send-off

A screwdriver and a torch, tools of a nocturnal trade, carried to altar at funeral of Dean Maguire

Father Donal Roche called it the most disturbing funeral he has ever attended, a homage to a life of crime played like a scene from The Sopranos.
Dean Maguire, 29, an Irish burglar with more than 25 convictions, had died in fiery motorway crash and mourners decided to give a memorable farewell.
Some blocked off roads leading to St Mary’s Priory Catholic church in Tallaght, west Dublin, while throngs piled into the church, flouting Ireland’s Covid-19 rules.
A screwdriver and a torch, tools of a nocturnal trade, were carried to the altar.
A poster paid tribute in rhyme. “RIP Dean. You know the score, get on the floor, don’t be funny, give me the money.”
Mourners who made eulogies said Maguire would not be forgotten. “Sorry for the language, Father – rest in peace, you fucking legend,” said one woman.
The atmosphere was highly charged, said Roche, who tried in vain to control the numbers entering the church while a colleague officiated at the mass.
“It was the most disturbing liturgy I have ever been at. There was a sense of restlessness, and the priest officiating was up against it,” he told RTÉ. “I didn’t feel in that much danger … but I did wonder, am I going to get a belt here?”
Since details of the mass last Friday seeped into the media there has been a public outcry at the glorification of criminals during funerals.
Diarmuid Martin, a former archbishop of Dublin, previously vowed that churches would not host such displays. Roche said he had no warning about the tributes to Maguire. When he phoned the police he was told their presence would inflame the situation and that officers would come only if there was a criminal act.
Gardaí are investigating videos that appear to show the hearse and some accompanying cars speeding and jumping traffic lights.
Maguire, who was wanted by British police, died on 7 July along with Graham Taylor and Carl Freeman when the BMW they were travelling in crashed into a truck on the N7, leaving the truck driver injured.
They were driving the wrong way up the motorway after fleeing from police. The trio were reportedly part of the same burglary gang, with more than 200 convictions between them.
Freeman was buried on Monday after a funeral procession with a horse-drawn hearse escorted by scrambler motorbikes.

[Leo Enticknap]

From The Daily Telegraph:

Ron Popeil, businessman who founded Ronco and claimed to be the greatest salesman of the 20th century – obituary

Ron Popeil, the self-styled “Greatest salesman of the [20th] Century”, who has died aged 86, was the founder of Ronco, purveyor of products with brand names often ending in “O-Matic”, that you never knew you needed – and probably discovered, too late, that you did not need.

His career began working for his father Samuel, a Chicago-based manufacturer of run-of-the-mill kitchen devices who had developed a sideline as an inventor of gadgets such as the Citrex juice extractor, the Toastette sandwich-pie maker and the Slice-a-Way cutting board.

Samuel also created the Chop-O-Matic, an onion-chopper employing a rotating, spring-loaded steel blade. At first, the Popeils sold the Chop-O-Matic through live demonstrations at flea markets, dime stores and at Woolworth’s. But in 1958 Ron began selling the gadget on television.

He made a five-minute commercial, reprising his sing-song street-vendor pitch: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to show you the greatest kitchen appliance ever made … If you order right now, the price is not $5.98, but $3.98. That’s right, $3.98. As a special bonus, you will receive with your Chop-O-Matic at no additional charge a valuable recipe book: 50 Secret Recipes by World Famous Chefs.”

Sales boomed and the O-Matic range grew to include the Dial-O-Matic slicer, the Whip-O-Matic frothy drink mixer and the Mince-O-Matic grinder.

The Popeils hit the jackpot with the Veg-O-Matic, launched in 1963, “The only appliance worldwide that can slice whole, firm tomatoes in one stroke, with every seed in place”, for which Ron coined what became his catchphrase: “But wait, there’s more!!!”.

The following year he founded Ronco, which went on to market hundreds of “amazing” gadgets to television audiences around the world, pioneering what became known as “infomercials” and, on packaging and in the print media, puffs featuring the phrase “As seen on TV”.

The Veg-O-Matic’s closest rival in fame was the Ronco Pocket Fisherman of 1972 (“the biggest fishing invention since the hook … and still only $19.95!”) – a spin-casting rod that folded down to pocket size.

Other Ronco products included an Inside-the-Shell Electric Egg Scrambler (“Gets rid of those slimy egg whites in your scrambled eggs”); GLH-9 [Great Looking Hair], spray-on hair-in-a-can, guaranteed to get rid of bald spots; the Ronco Rhinestone Stud Setter (“changes everyday clothing into exciting fashions”); the Buttoneer, which fixed buttons to clothes with plastic staples; Mr Microphone, a wireless mic that played through your radio; and the Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ, which, though marketed under the catchphrase “Set it and forget it”, came with an instruction book advising users to do no such thing.

The rotisserie was said to have racked up sales worth more than $1 billion, and Popeil claimed to have achieved a world record in 2000 by selling more than $1 million-worth during a one-hour live demonstration on the QVC channel.

In Britain, for more than a decade, Ronco was a leading purveyor of compilation pop albums, consisting of licenced hits from major record companies crammed on to 10-tracks-a-side LPs in cheap jackets. Sound reproduction was what one critic called “public convenience standard”, and songs often had to be faded out early to fit.

For those who bought them Ronco also sold a record vacuum which claimed to clean LPs, but became known as the “Ronco Record Ruiner” for its habit of scraping bits of grit across the vinyl.

Ronco ads were so successful they were frequently spoofed by comedians, most famously by Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live, promoting what he called the “Bass-O-Matic”, a blender that could turn a whole fish into a revolting brown sludge.

But to Popeil any publicity was good publicity and he played along with the jokes.

The younger of two brothers, Ronald Martin Popeil was born on May 3 1935 in the New York Bronx, and by his own account had a miserable childhood. After his parents divorced when he was three, he and his brother were shunted between foster homes and his constantly quarrelling paternal grandparents in Miami.

When he was 13 he moved to Chicago to work at Popeil Brothers, the factory founded by his father and an uncle in 1939, and found he had flair as a salesman. Aged 16 he began working the fair circuit and later peddled wares in Woolworth’s.

While his father was said to be willing to lend his son money, once Ron went into business on his own, he reportedly cut off all contact.

A recession in the early 1980s affected Ronco sales and the company went into liquidation in 1984. But Popeil bounced back and in 2005 he sold Ronco for $55 million. He continued to develop and market inventions through a successor company, Ron’s Enterprises, later creations including Popeil’s 5-in-1 Turkey Fryer (“It boils eggs! It steams clams and lobsters! It bakes bread! And best of all, it can fry a 15-pound turkey in 46 minutes!”).

In 1995 he published his autobiography, The Salesman of the Century.

Ron Popeil is survived by his fourth wife, Robin, and by four daughters.

Ron Popeil, born May 3 1935, died July 28, 2021

I remember the record cleaners being relentlessly advertised on TV in the late '70s and early '80s, but had no idea about their destructive flaw, though.

[Leo Enticknap]

I think this guy is trying to nominate himself for a Darwin Award.

British student stuck in Kabul after ‘danger tourism’ stunt backfires

A British student stuck in Afghanistan after embarking on an ill-advised holiday boasted to thousands of online followers about how he had researched the “most dangerous countries in the world”.

Miles Routledge, a 21-year-old physics undergraduate at Loughborough University, flew into Kabul on Friday as the Taliban prepared to seize control of the capital.

He chronicled his journey on the online forum 4chan, joking that he would be “goofing off and soaking in the sun”. At first, he appeared to dismiss the security threat posed by the advancing Taliban insurgents.

“The reason I came is because of the news,” he said in one post.

Mr Routledge, from Birmingham, claimed to have researched the 10 most dangerous countries in the world when planning the trip earlier this year. He has previously visited Chernobyl, the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

By Sunday, it had become clear his five-day trip was set to encounter significant complications as the city fell to the Taliban. By that point, he had already garnered a major internet following.

Mr Routledge posted several live videos from Kabul on video streaming site Twitch, including one in which he told viewers he had narrowly escaped unscathed from an encounter with the Taliban.

He also posted pictures of himself posing next to weapons at what he claimed was a military checkpoint.

“I kind of just thought, I’m going to be killed by the Taliban, fair enough,” he said.

An acquaintance of Mr Routledge from university, who asked not to be named, described him as a “massive attention-seeker” who had gained notoriety on campus for an anonymous confession page he founded on Facebook.

They told The Telegraph: “I don’t think he ever expected this much attention, more like something that he could tell friends about down the line and post a couple of pics.”

The acquaintance recalled hearing Mr Routledge first mention his travel plans in March before he bought his tickets in May, adding: “I think he genuinely just got incredibly unlucky with the date of the flight he booked.”

Mr Routledge posted other updates on his Facebook page where he spoke more candidly about the “anarchy” unfolding in Kabul and the psychological toll it had taken on him. He said he was in a “bit of a pickle” after flights were cancelled.

He also claimed his tour guide was “fearing for his family”, adding: “His only crime is going the extra mile and saving my life.”

On Monday, he indicated he would be part of an “emergency evacuation” after apparently finding refuge with Western forces. A since-deleted picture showed him posing in a flak jacket with a British flag on it while holding a rifle.

A Foreign office spokesman said: "We are aware of this case and are attempting to reach the individual to offer assistance. We are working hard to contact all the British nationals we are aware of who remain in Afghanistan, to help them leave the country."

No ... really?

[Leo Enticknap]

Here's another potential Darwin Award nominee, though this time, for the rarer category (someone who renders himself unable to reproduce by accidentally making himself infertile, as distinct from by killing himself):

Teen gets USB cable stuck in penis in backfired attempt to measure length

He backed up his hard drive — and his penis.

A UK teen had to undergo emergency surgery after a bananas attempt to measure his manhood resulted in him getting a USB cable lodged in his urethra.

The phallic fiasco reportedly began after an unnamed 15-year-old boy was “triggered by sexual curiosity” and inserted a USB wire into his urethra, per a wince-worthy study published in the medical journal Urology Case Reports.

The sexperiment backfired when the cable became lodged in the curious teen’s scrotum like an electronic catheter. Despite attempts to extract it himself, the USB cord became tangled so terribly that both ends were left hanging out of his wired willy.

The plugged-up boy’s family transported him to the hospital after he began urinating blood. After initial attempts to remove the wire failed, the teen was transferred to University College Hospital London to see if they could extricate the intra-penile measuring tape.

Per the report, the embarrassed boy asked to speak to doctors without his mother present, whereupon he “confessed” to his frightening escapade.

Subsequent X-rays revealed that there was a veritable Gordian Knot of USB wire inside the teenager, which required surgeons to make an incision in the region between his genitals and anus to yank it out. They pulled the spooled end through the hole first, cutting it free from the rest of the wire before removing the remaining bits — literally pulling the plug.

Thankfully, the boy recovered without incident and was discharged from the hospital the following day. However, he did have to undergo a follow-up scan two weeks later and will require monitoring in the future.

He should thank his lucky stars. Inserting foreign objects in one’s private parts can lead to a host of complications, from urinary tract infections to urethral injuries, London andrologist Amr Raheem told the Daily Mail.

It’s unclear why someone would engage in this type of invasive member-measuring method, but experts say it often stems from “sexual curiosity, sexual practice after intoxication, and mental disorders such as borderline, schizoaffective and bipolar personality disorders,” per the study, which noted that “the patient was an otherwise fit and healthy adolescent with no history of mental health disorders.”

Experts have also blamed “sounding,” a strange proclivity defined by inserting foreign bodies in one’s urethra. Last month, a randy Michigan man was left struggling to pee after he got six kidney beans lodged in his urethra during a bizarre attempt at sexual gratification.

Unfortunately, Raheem said phallus-filling maneuvers are “becoming more common as everything is thanks to social media and in general the easier ways that misinformation can be spread.”

USB_Xray.JPG
He should have used a USB-C cable rather than plain old Micro USB - it would have given him more bandwidth!

[Frank Cox]

https://canoe.com/news/weird/two-mis...9-c328883b60a2

Two Mississippi men take ‘free car,’ find body in trunk

A free car came with a dead body – at least that was the case for two men in Mississippi on Sunday morning.

Two men in Byram, Miss., must have thought it was their lucky day when they came across a vehicle with a sign on it that read “free car.”

And no hot-wiring required; the keys of the Acura were inside.

“There was a sign across the front of it that said, ‘free car,’” Copiah County Coroner Ellis Stuart told People. “They decided to give it a try.”

The men got into the car, said Stuart, and drove about 45 kilometres south to a property owned by a family member.

They reportedly started looking in and around the car and found the dead, naked body of a man “that had been there for at least 24 hours,” according to the coroner.

The two men immediately called 911 and remained at the scene until police showed up, he added.

The victim was identified as Anthony McCrillis, 34, who is the registered owner of the car.

McCrillis was last seen in the Byram area on Friday night around 9 p.m., said police.

The body has been sent to the medical examiner’s office for an autopsy to determine cause of death.

“There are no visible signs of trauma as far as a gunshot or a stabbing,” explained Stuart, who added that the man was not bound.

“We are waiting to see what [the autopsy] tells us.”

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Here's another potential Darwin Award nominee, though this time, for the rarer category (someone who renders himself unable to reproduce by accidentally making himself infertile, as distinct from by killing himself):



USB_Xray.JPG
He should have used a USB-C cable rather than plain old Micro USB - it would have given him more bandwidth!

That had to be incredibly painful to insert, much less remove. I have had the distinct displeasure of having a swab test done once and the pain nearly caused me to pass out. (And I have a very high pain threshold, great for motocross but not so great for getting near fatal blood cots caught in time... )

Tide Pods and now this....kids are a special breed of stupid these days.

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

> That had to be incredibly painful

Which makes me wonder if this was actually true, or if this was just clickbait for the original news story.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saska...fall-1.6185356

We were in bed when we heard the strange scratching sound from the heating vent.

I pounded on the vent and shone a light in. The noise stopped, seemingly aware of my presence. Then it started again, real spooky-like.

Was it the furnace groaning to life?

Was it a g-g-ghost?

Or worse…much worse…was it a mouse?

As the weather turns to fall, mice want indoors. They've been roaming the streets with impunity, smoking and playing dice in the alleys, and now they're recruiting a gang to invade our homes.

Sure enough, the next night I caught a little rodent Bruce Willis crawling through the vents.

I imagine him leaving for the office that morning, kissing his wife with briefcase and fedora in hand. Now his wife is fretting, the children are crying, and I'm Tony Soprano dumping Daddy's corpse in the garbage bin outside.

I wasn't always a cold, steely-eyed hunter. I used to be a coward — the kind they write folk songs about.

When we caught our first mouse 15 years ago, I made my wife Jenny deal with it, even though she's terrified of mice.

Jenny is like a cartoon character that jumps on a chair, shouting, "Eek! A mouse!" This would be funny, except she told me that it's not funny at all. I once made squeaking sounds to mess with her, but she reminded me I didn't want a divorce.

Anxiety about mice is understandable. Having pests is stigmatizing. It makes you feel dirty.

Mice chew up your home and carry diseases like hantavirus. It's hard to sleep when you imagine that they're crawling on you, drinking from your water glass, maybe even pooping in your mouth.

"Let's burn the house down," Jenny suggested.

I was never afraid of mice. They're kinda' cute for disease-ridden vermin. My cowardice revolved around killing them. Glassy-eyed dead things scare the bejesus out of me. But society dictates that I should do it because I'm "the man." I'm all for dismantling the patriarchy.

Eight years ago, I managed to redeem myself in my wife's eyes.

It was 3 a.m. I was jolted awake by the sound of Jenny screaming from my infant son's nursery. I bolted out of bed in my underwear. I thought something was wrong with my son. I thought I was about to perform CPR on a baby.

I kicked the door open and saw Jenny holding the baby.

"Eek! A mouse!" she shouted.

I almost turned and left her there for scaring me so badly. Instead I grabbed a plastic bag and tongs. I'm not sure why I wanted tongs or how that was supposed to work. Give me a break, it was 3 a.m.

The mouse bolted like Stuart Little, hurtling over toys, careening around furniture, chancing a panicked look over his shoulder at the scantily-clad, lumbering giant stomping behind him.

He couldn't find a toy car to make his getaway, so he ran out the door into the dining room, where I'd surely lose him.

I closed my eyes and took a breath. I reached out with my tongs and scooped him up like Mr. Miyagi catching a fly with chopsticks.

That night I went from coward, to somewhat-redeemed coward.

I've caught many more mice since then. Now, they fear me. They know when they see me — with my traps, rubber gloves and trademark tongs — that it's already too late.

I am the widowmaker, the marmalizer of mice, the violator of voles, Mickey's Plague.

I am the one who knocks (on the vents).

The mouse in the duct that night must have been from out of town. Maybe he wanted a shot at the title, to write himself into legend as the giant-slayer. But there will be no songs about him sung in mouse taverns.

So go ahead, mice. Come at me. Try to scare my wife and steal my crumbs and make your tiny poops in my home.

Just remember what Omar said on The Wire.

"You come at the king — you best not miss."

[Leo Enticknap]

Mice are an annoyance, but nothing like the health and property threat that rats are. They can't gnaw through food containers, drywall, etc., they don't reproduce as quickly, and they aren't a vector for diseases that can be fatal to humans (e.g. Weil's Disease and rabies). In exurbian and rural areas they are pretty much endemic, and sooner or later, one will likely run in through an open window or your back door.

The best way to keep them, and other pests and bugs, under control, is to have a cat or cats. One of ours once staked out the TV cabinet for the best part of a day, besieging a cockroach that had taken refuge under it, before eventually catching it and proudly presenting me with the corpse.

[Harold Hallikainen]

The mouse story reminds me of Squirrel Cop at https://www.thisamericanlife.org/510/fiasco-2013

Harold

[Frank Cox]

I have only had two mice here. The first time was about fifteen years ago when I woke up to a mysterious thumping sound in the middle of the night. I went to find out what was thumping and discovered a mouse in an empty five gallon pail. How or why it got into that pail I have no idea, but its efforts to get back out were what was making that thumping sound. Not really knowing what to do (and it being the middle of the night) I just took the pail outside and a bit down the street and threw the mouse out into the street. In hindsight I should have just put a couple of inches of water into that pail and then dumped the dead mouse in the morning, but I didn't think of that until later on.

The second time was just a couple of weeks ago. Late in the evening my wife screamed, "Frank, come quick!" Not knowing what was going on I raced into the kitchen and she said, "There's a mouse right over there." I looked over there and sure enough a mouse ran across the floor into a corner. It must have come in when I opened the door to take out the garbage about fifteen minutes earlier.

I told her to watch that corner and got a piece of plywood out of the basement that was big enough to barricade the corner. After getting it blocked off I got an ice cream pail and started searching everything in that area. I didn't have a really clear plan for what I was going to do when I found the mouse but I had some idea of trying to get it into the pail.

I searched everything in that corner and no mouse. I searched everything again and still no mouse.

I had a mousetrap that I bought and never needed to use after the mouse in the pail episode, so I congratulated myself on my foresight in having this trap available and got it out for the first time.

Set it, put some peanut butter on it and put it down in that corner. Left it alone and a few minutes later, SNAP! The trap had sprung but no mouse. However, I noticed that when I put the peanut butter on the trap I had got a bit of it smeared on the outside as well and some of that seemed to be missing. I carefully cleaned that off so there was no peanut butter anywhere on the trap other than the trigger, and set it again.

Some time after that, SNAP! Trap again sprung but still no mouse.

This trap being fairly lightweight plastic with a very snappy spring in it, I thought that it's probably bouncing and moving when it's sprung and missing the mouse. I had just been putting it down on the floor but this time I reset it and put it into the corner so it was supported on two sides. Ten minutes after that, SNAP! Dead mouse in the trap, and problem solved.

I disposed of the mouse and spent the rest of that evening cleaning everything in that corner. Haven't seen a mouse since. I bought a couple of new traps and set them but there's been no activity at all there since so I guess there was just that one single mouse.

[Leo Enticknap]

From the Daily Telegraph's letters page today:

SIR – I have just received my letter from the Department for Transport inviting me to help alleviate the driver shortage. I shall not be doing so. The several days I wasted on Driver CPC training still scar me.

These patronising and thoroughly useless courses were imposed by the EU, and I would be interested to see if there is any evidence that they have benefited anyone besides the training providers. On a typical day, the course content was enough to fill an hour, but the rules kept you there for seven.

One particularly sticks in my mind. The class was on healthy lifestyles for HGV drivers, delivered by a morbidly obese instructor who insisted on a cigarette break every half hour.

Philip Collison
Terrington St Clement, Norfolk

HGV = heavy goods vehicle, the British term for a big rig.

I feel for this guy. I've lost count of the number of training courses I've had to attend, the content of which could have been covered in one hour if delivered by a competent trainer, but took a whole day because it wasn't.

[Randy Stankey]

A few years ago, I had to take a special driver's exam because I ran two stop signs in the span of a year. In PA, if you take the test again and pass, it'll take points off your record.

The town cops in the borough where I live are a bunch of real-life Deputy Fifes! I once got pulled over less than 100 yards from my house at 1:30 a.m. (on my way home from work on 2nd shift) because the cop claimed my headlight was out, which it wasn't. He was basically asking, without actually asking, "What are you doing out, driving around in this neighborhood so late at night?" When I showed him my ID badge from work then pointed at my house and said, "I live RIGHT THERE!" he was all like, "Umm...Allright." These are the same cops that stopped me for not counting "Three Mississippi" before proceeding at a stop sign.

Anyhow, when I went downtown to retake the exam, the place was full of dunderheads. Both customers and employees. The guy proctoring the exam was legally blind and had to use a magnifier to read anything. Most of the other test takers weren't much better. You've got a time limit to finish the test but it's ridiculously stupid. Like, two hours to take a 20 question, multiple choice test on a "Scantron" sheet. All the questions are bloody simple. Red means stop and green means go.

Not only was I the first person to finish, I was the only one who got 20 out of 20 and there were a few who failed. Not only that, some needed the whole two hours and there was one guy who was dong the old "fill in the rest of the answers at the last second trick" after the proctor called "Pencils down."

Everybody had to stay in the room for the whole time because they don't score the tests until everybody hands in their papers. No talking and no books or personal items allowed. They claim to do this in order to discourage cheating.

Umm... The guy administering the test is legally BLIND! How could he tell if somebody is cheating?!

All this for a test that a fifth grader could pass in thirty minutes?

SHEESH!!