Re: What would make you believe?

Wildepad wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:24:32 +0000 (UTC), cgoodin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Chuk Goodin)
> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:08:54 GMT, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>

>> wrote:
> 
>>> And I should add that I find it implausible that standard operating 
>>> procedure during WWII was to insert secret agents into enemy territory

>>> with not even a single dollar to their name.
>> Yeah. I mean, they can find 500 lottery numbers but can't tell that 
>> panhandling is okay? 
> 
> But it's not okay. If they have computer records of this era, they'll
> see arrests for panhandling and/or vagrancy in virtually every US city
> (the police often use those charges to get a disruptive person into
> the system).

Yay, more complete ignorance of how the world works!

In the United States, panhandling is usually not illegal unless you're 
doing it on private property.  Where it is, it is rarely enforced.  Even 
then, many businesses tolerate it to varying degrees, if only because 
they don't want to deal with the trouble.  There are more in larger 
cities than smaller ones.  You have to really, really, _really_ make a 
pain in the ass of yourself to attract the police by begging for money. 
  You have to become completely unreasonable at that point to actually 
get arrested.  And then you'd have to do something completely insane to 
be actually booked and charged and arraigned and tried and convicted.

At worst, even if the police got called, you'd be moved along.  That's 
it.  Then you'd start panhandling elsewhere.

There was a guy who panhandled outside of my local grocery store for 
years.  YEARS.  Every day, it was his regular job.  (This was the guy 
with the cell phone, to relate it to a previous insane anecdote.)

The notion that someone panhandling on a city street -- for just a few 
hours, enough to get a dollar -- is at really serious risk of getting 
harassed by the police, or even arrested, is totally absurd.  Unless 
they're insane or _trying_ to attract attention, neither of which could 
apply here.

And, most important of all -- the likelihood of someone showing up at 
someone's house with a crazy story and requesting that they buy a 
lottery ticket with your numbers is _far_ more likely to result in 
unpleasant circumstances for the "time traveller" than is asking someone 
on the street for a buck without the nonsense story and then buying the 
ticket yourself.

But even then, you've fabulously missed the point.  If being arrested 
for panhandling is a massively serious problem (note: conceal laughter 
here), then if the future-apocalypse dwellers who have such trivial 
information as the results of local lotteries going back _centuries_ 
would have no problem looking at the very crime statistics you 
referenced and choosing places to try to ask for money with likely good 
outcomes with minimal chance of getting in trouble with the authorities.

But then, as I've said, that's not the real world, so you're zero for 
two.  After all, they're choosing possibly the dumbest and most 
suspicious ways to accomplish their goals, so obviously sensibility and 
working intelligently toward their eventual goals is not their strong
suit.

-- 
Erik Max Francis && max@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
  San Jose, CA, USA && 37 18 N 121 57 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis
   Well I have been puppetized / Oh how I have compromised
    -- Lamya