The Blog of Harald

“A Mom Lets Her Son Walk to Soccer…And The Police Come Calling”:http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/a-mom-lets-her-son-walk-to-soccerand-the-police-come-calling/

bq. From the Free Range Kids blog, the story of Lori from a small town in Mississippi, who sent her 10-year-old on foot to soccer practice, only to have him picked up by the cops, who reported “hundreds” of 911 calls by curtain-twitchers who were horrified at the thought of a 10-year-old walking a third of a mile to a local school. The cops told her she could be charged with child endangerment After she complained to the cops, the local police chief called her to apologize and to reassure her that she lived in a safe neighborhood. The moral of the story: stand your ground when crazy people tell you that your kid needs to be swaddled in bubblewrap until she’s 22.

From the article:

bq. My 10-year-old son wanted the chance to walk from our house to soccer practice behind an elementary school about 1/3 mile from our house. He had walked in our neighborhood a number of times with the family and we have driven the route to practice who knows how many times. It was broad daylight – 5:00 pm. I had to be at the field myself 15 minutes after practice started, so I gave him my cell phone and told him I would be there to check that he made it and sent him off. He got 3 blocks and a police car intercepted him. The police came to my house — after I had left — and spoke with my younger children who were home with Grandma. They then found me at the soccer field and proceeded to tell me how I could be charged with child endangerment. They said they had gotten “hundreds” of calls to 911 about him walking. Now, I know bad things can happen and I wasn’t flippant about letting him go and not checking up, but come on. I live in a small town in Mississippi. To be perfectly honest, I’m much more concerned about letting him attend a birthday party sleepover next Friday, but I’m guessing the police wouldn’t be at my house if I chose to let him go which I probably won’t.

via Boing Boing

Schneier on Security: The Kindness of Strangers

h3. The Kindness of Strangers

bq. When I was growing up, children were commonly taught: “dont talk to strangers.” Strangers might be bad, we were told, so its prudent to steer clear of them.

bq. As it turns out, this is profoundly bad advice. Most people are honest, kind, and generous, especially when someone asks them for help. If a small child is in trouble, the smartest thing he can do is find a nice-looking stranger and talk to him.

bq. The advice in each of these paragraphs may seem to contradict each other, but they dont. The difference is that in the second instance, the child is choosing which stranger to talk to. Given that the overwhelming majority of people will help, the child is likely to get help if he chooses a random stranger. But if a stranger comes up to a child and talks to him or her, its not a random choice. Its more likely, although still unlikely, that the stranger is up to no good.

(I’ve ranted about this before, in “talk to strangers”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/archives/2005/06/24/talk-to-strangers/ and “strangers”:http://blog.cfrq.net/chk/archives/2005/06/24/strangers/)

“The World’s Biggest Diamond Heist”:http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diamonds

These guys managed to blow through many layers of hi-tech security with careful planning and some low-tech tricks, and one huge security gaff: the “unduplicatable” key for the vault was hung on the wall in a storeroom next door.

My favorite bit, I think, was how they disabled a magnetic sensor on the vault door, that would detect the door being opened; they brought a piece of aluminum covered in double-sided tape, stuck it over the sensor pieces, unscrewed the pieces from the vault door and door frame, and swung them out of the way. The sensor was never triggered because the two pieces remained in contact…

The article is a bit long, but it’s worth reading both for how they got through all of the security, and the one stupid mistake they made that led to them all getting caught…

Charlotte has a Facebook account.

I’m still trying to decide if this is a sign of the Apocalypse or not…

Tomorrow is the first day of “nerdigras”:http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200903/square_root_of_christmas.html ; let the festivities begin!

(I wonder what the pancake-equivalent is? :-)

http://biggeekdaddy.com/miscvideos/everythingsamazing.html

It’s true. We live in amazing times, and everyone is as grumpy as ever!

February seems to have vanished completely, as my last post was on January 29th. Ah well, it’s a deformed month, with the missing three days bit; February don’t get no respect!

Oh ya, I went on a cruise with 16 other people; planning, packing, and executing ate my brain. Then I came back to news that most of you have heard by now, and now it’s March…