Thanks to The Lizardman for his latest article:
Tattooed People Onstage:
From Exhibitions to Entertainers.
PART I
“The love of beauty in its multiple forms is the noblest gift of the human cerebrum.”
- Alexis Carrel
The modern Western perception of tattooing has been indelibly marked by its cultural association with the sideshow and its historical predecessor the traveling exhibit. Tattooing as an art form cut its teeth and developed in the West in great part due to the desire for and profit to be had by exhibiting tattooed people. At many circuses and carnivals one could not only see a tattooed marvel but also receive a permanent souvenir from the traveling tattoo artist on the lot. For years, tattoo artists commonly spent most of their time on the road with such shows, possibly also serving as its banner painter, and then wintering at a street shop location. A great example of such an artist, and an inspirational tale in its own right, is Stoney St. Clair whose life and work was documented in what is often considered a seminal work in the history of tattooing: Stoney Knows How (BOOK, VHS).
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Democracy is one of the biggest lies of the modern world. While it probably is a good tool for organizing local poltics, it is one of the worst, most unfair governmental systems out there, and it simply does not work, even in a best case scenario. Here's why, in simple terms:
- The average person will make decisions that are in the best interests of themselves and people they feel kinship with. This is a basic biological response and hard to overcome.
- The average person will vote for things that help them, and will vote against things that help strangers, especially if they perceive it will take resources away from them or their kin.
I belive that the above premises are true. It's not that people are fundamentally bad or anything like that, it's that they're fundamentally selfish — which is normal and healthy. All animals know to protect themselves and their kin against outsiders. It's basic instinct. It's why people are afraid of different races, gays, tattooed people, the handicapped, and so on.
Now, let's look at what a democracy does, at its core:
- A democracy allows the majority to select a ruler. By definition, it will not allow the minority to select a ruler because they don't have enough votes.
So to be clear, a democracy is the ultimate political system for suppressing minority groups and ideas. This is why it's so hard for a democracy to grant gay rights, tattoo rights, or change the status quo in any way. The only way that a democracy can help minorities is when they subvert it with massive media actions that basically “trick” the mainstream into supporting them.
Since it's been something like 11 years since I've actively been involved in breaking this type of security, I don't think anything I say can be used against me. To be very clear — I have little interest in personally robbing banks or committing wire fraud at this point in my life. I do however have a great deal of interest in the security arrangements banks make to take care of my assets. So here are some comments from my afternoon at the bank.
My bank has just upgraded their computers to some new “paperless” (minus the thousands of brochures promoting it of course) system. As anyone who's spent much time in a bank can tell you, the more paperless a system is, the more scraps of paper are needed to write down account numbers to take from terminal to terminal. Because of this, the bank has set up an “accessory” terminal that all the tellers can use when they need to look up account details.
It's got an LCD screen which shows its results in nice, easy to read 24 point Arial which any monkey can write down from across the room. That's right Ezzat Si Kavali, not only do I know your name and account number and secret phrase, I also know your PIN number since you had to type it in a dozen times while saying it out loud*. Anyway, point is that these terminals should be facing the tellers and AWAY from the customers, not plainly visible to anyone in the bank.
For those of you who talked to me about this in RI, I present to you the following snippet:
Me: I have sort of an odd question.
Bank: OK, what is it?
Me: When someone puts stuff into their bank deposit box, do you search it?
Bank: No.
Me: Well what if they put in an icecream cone in and it dripped onto the stuff in the box below?
Bank: We just have to trust that our customers are honest and wouldn't do anything like that. One person who was mad at us put a fish in their box, that was terrible.
Me: Really? What did you do?
Bank: I don't know… it wasn't at this branch, but I heard it was terrible.
Me: Could they just search all the boxes?
Bank: I don't think so.
Me: Wow. Well, I hope no one puts a bomb in one of the boxes.
When I have more time I'll explain the whole thing (a truly “foolproof” way to hit a bank for about $4,000,000 and not get caught) here, unless I already did and am just forgetting doing so. Actually, who am I kidding? If I already explained it, it increases my chances of repeating the explanation if past trends hold true.
*
Ezzat was having trouble because he remembered his PIN number by the “letters” (ie. 2=ABC, 3=DEF, etc.), which is problematic because Moneris (who my bank uses for its card hardware) uses a proprietary lettering scheme, so his PIN didn't match up like it should.
