Age discrimination rant
2002-08-26 - 10:49 p.m.
What do you think of when you hear the term "age discrimination"? I think of discrimination based on anyone of any age, based on their age. But when I read about some young people being treated unfairly, I Googled for that phrase, I found pages of sites about discrimination against senior citizens, and most of them focused on workplace discrimination.
So, I added the words "youth" and "young" and found this site, which was a high school project. Warning: it's a Tripod site, so if you're susceptible to pop-ups, that page and every sub-page will yield an annoying ad.
When I was growing up, I remember there were adults who treated me like a child, and others who treated me like a person. There were a few somewhere in the middle too.
Oh! I remember when I learned the meaning of the word "adolescent." My parents watched a lot of news, and I had heard that word used together with "crime" and other bad things, so I had guessed it meant something bad. Do you think the news reinforces some people's bias against youth?
These musings have been brought to you today by the Houston, TX police raid of 17 Aug 2002. See piece and this follow-up. The raid arrested everyone at a parking lot, where there's a 24-hour K-mart and a Sonic burger joint (where you are supposed to eat in your car outside). Sure, there were a few hundred people, but I think arresting everyone there is, well, insane.
Also, I think there is time discrimination involved. I ran into a message board about the story, and this quote stood out: "I find eating dinner at 12:30 am a bit unbelievable as well." Also this one: "im sorry no kid belongs out after hrs." People have different internal clocks, and I need to find the study that says high-school aged people in general function better later, and making them get up early to go to school hampers their learning.
One last memory: a friend of mine used to live in a small town and hang out with her punk friends at the only park in town, which was very small. Nearby business owners would call the police on them for "loitering," and police would ask them to leave. Bleh.
Zero Sleep (or so)
2002-08-24 - 07:02 p.m.
I slept about 3 hours during the night till my body woke me up.
I went to the post office to get a piece of certified mail, and brought packages for two friends, but the hours on the thing said when I could get the letter but not when I could actually mail anything, which was 10am. I went to the next nearest station, but it's closed on weekends completely. I went to Whole Foods, got some food, ate, and went back and mailed stuff.
I was winding down to sleep for a little while before work when the Zero package came, and that was the end of my sleep plans. I was quite excited. I'm uploading one of the 3(!) divx files he sent to the co-lo server so I can send it to IRC folks. I also got Hikaru no Go 45 and put it on my fserve just before I left for work. Ooh, I also fixed a weird problem that was stopping my fserve by poking around the perl script. :)
Oh and Yahuli thinks maybe I should get into web hosting for profit. I might throw together a business plan for fun. :)
