You know, the one the tail keeps wagging. After long deliberation I have arrived at the conclusion that people are both stupid and lazy. (Once again, I'm not talking about you. I am however talking about me. Not me alone, or necessarily in this regard but I am stupid and lazy.) More particularly, people tend to miss the point. Whatever the point may be.
For example, years ago, in the dim ages of another century, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and music was recorded on vinyl (as God intended,) if you had money in the bank but not in your pocket, and you wanted to spend it you wrote a check. For the benefit of any young people unfortunate enough to have stumbled on this blog, this was before the days of debit cards, even before ATMs. Credit cards did exist (for rich people) but checks were like little, paper, one transaction at a time debit cards. You'd fill it out, the store would take it, and the bank would give the store your money for it. All in a mysterious banker sort of magic.
The problem was, anybody could write your name on a check. This was a dilema for the store. On the one hand, they didn't want to give their merchandise away for a worthless piece of paper, but on the other they didn't want to miss out on making a sale. So they figured out ways to minimize their risk. One of the things they did to make sure that the person writing the check was actually the person named on the check was to ask their minimum wage cashiers to look at a picture ID. Since we're talking about high school kids making $2.10 an hour (less if you go back far enough) they needed a way to confirm that, so they asked the cashiers to write the customer's drivers' license number on the check.
Remember now, the store didn't want the number, they wanted to insure that the cashier looked at the license. But, as I have already observed PEOPLE ARE LAZY! First they would just recite the number from memory because they didn't want to get the license out, but soon, in a stroke of ABSOLUTE GENIUS they began to have the number actually PRINTED ON THEIR CHECKS. I'm even more bewildered that the bank, equally concerned about worthless paper, actually printed those checks for these geniuses. Now we're back to where we started.
Back then, signing someone elses name to a check was called forgery. The concept of "identity theft" was still in the future. And all of the foregoing is a setup for next weeks rant:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "IDENTITY THEFT."
And now I earnestly solicit your feedback on this post, before I proceed to solve the rest of the world's problems. That said let me take care of a little housekeeping: I still haven't "cleaned up" my Dark Shadows review. As of right now I plan to retire in 982 days.
Now get off my lawn.
For example, years ago, in the dim ages of another century, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and music was recorded on vinyl (as God intended,) if you had money in the bank but not in your pocket, and you wanted to spend it you wrote a check. For the benefit of any young people unfortunate enough to have stumbled on this blog, this was before the days of debit cards, even before ATMs. Credit cards did exist (for rich people) but checks were like little, paper, one transaction at a time debit cards. You'd fill it out, the store would take it, and the bank would give the store your money for it. All in a mysterious banker sort of magic.
The problem was, anybody could write your name on a check. This was a dilema for the store. On the one hand, they didn't want to give their merchandise away for a worthless piece of paper, but on the other they didn't want to miss out on making a sale. So they figured out ways to minimize their risk. One of the things they did to make sure that the person writing the check was actually the person named on the check was to ask their minimum wage cashiers to look at a picture ID. Since we're talking about high school kids making $2.10 an hour (less if you go back far enough) they needed a way to confirm that, so they asked the cashiers to write the customer's drivers' license number on the check.
Remember now, the store didn't want the number, they wanted to insure that the cashier looked at the license. But, as I have already observed PEOPLE ARE LAZY! First they would just recite the number from memory because they didn't want to get the license out, but soon, in a stroke of ABSOLUTE GENIUS they began to have the number actually PRINTED ON THEIR CHECKS. I'm even more bewildered that the bank, equally concerned about worthless paper, actually printed those checks for these geniuses. Now we're back to where we started.
Back then, signing someone elses name to a check was called forgery. The concept of "identity theft" was still in the future. And all of the foregoing is a setup for next weeks rant:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "IDENTITY THEFT."
And now I earnestly solicit your feedback on this post, before I proceed to solve the rest of the world's problems. That said let me take care of a little housekeeping: I still haven't "cleaned up" my Dark Shadows review. As of right now I plan to retire in 982 days.
Now get off my lawn.
I agree with the topic "people are stupid and lazy" which includes me at times. I am stupid enough to believe that folks care about what have to say so i blog or facebook daily and somedays i do both. I am lazy in that i have said for years i was going to write a book but instead of writing the book i facebook and blog. Maybe i will just print out the pages one day, bind them together and make a book.
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