One of the items shown on the Ft. Knox documentary was a fingerprint scanning device. They would not show it if it still worked. Why doesn’t it work? Well, short of cutting off somebody’s finger and using that, it is because finger prints can be changed. What? You didn’t know that? I’ll tell you how but you have to keep reading. The danger is a DNA database, but thanks to television, most criminals already know how to avoid leaving traces, or how salt the crime scene with other people’s DNA. All such databases treat everyone as a criminal and that is why they are a threat. There is even talk of DNA-ing newborn babies. I am against this or any government collecting such information because the authorities have a 100% record of abusing the data. Look what they did to driver’s licenses. It was once only a license to drive, believe it or not. If the police wanted ID, that was (and should be) a separate matter.
We’ve been having so much fun, I forgot to mention that last Friday was an anniversary for me. Five years now since I quit smoking. It can be done. As Lewis Grizzard said, “Just quit, damn it.”
By coincidence, it is also the date I discovered my parents had lied to me about paying for my education. One day I will write that book, it is a piece of dirty linen I don’t care if the whole world knows. My parents repeatedly promised me if I worked on the farm for free (I did), they would pay for my university (they didn’t). When I enrolled they delayed and I found out years later they had purposely been stalling until I turned 18 so that the promise to pay became legally unenforceable. My own parents did that.
I’ve heard so many wild tales about kids who “got a job and put themselves through”. That seems to be a popular contention and in each case is certainly a lie. Those people are not addressing the fact that no unskilled labouring job could ever begin to pay for just the tuition, much less room and board. If I could do it over again, I would have learned a trade, which would have allowed me to get a summer job that paid enough to at least offset living on student loans, which were another thing I had never planned on. Even so, student loans are just enough to go to school, they cannot make up for complete lack of parental support in other areas. Thanks to that environment, I did not even know what a student loan was until I desperately required one.
For the record, my parents often stated they were “too poor” to help me. The fact is, my father was a vice-principal, my mother was a head nurse, both union jobs with a combined income in the top 5% of the world. If I’ve pointed all this out before, it is because it rates as a permanent warning. In the end, they paid up a grand total of $20 and even that had conditions attached.
Oh yes, the fingerprint thing. It is done by grafting the skin from a few of your own toe-prints onto your fingertips. I understand the cost is around $4,000 so it is likely a popular procedure these days. Hint: most cops are bullies who didn’t do well socially or academically in high school, I’m just stating a fact, not an opinion. Changing only two or three fingerprints to your toe prints is enough to fool them. Plus, if they catch on, you still have a few toes in reserve. I am not advocating any criminal activity, but I believe if the authorities want information, they should be asking you and not some database. Why? Because making an ID check first thing removes any Presumption of Innocence.
