Gender: Female
Industry: Law
Age: Unknown
Location: Undisclosed

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Social Insecurity Number

I remember when I was growing up, my grandfather would always tell me to remember my social security number, but never to give it to anyone. He said it was a number that was given only to me, and it could never be changed. Therefore, it was the only identity that could be used to tell who I really was.
When I started college, I realized that my special personal number, the number that I should always keep private, was expected to be included on every form, application, and document I filled out for the school. At first, my reaction was, “Hey, I don’t know who you are! I’m not just going to write down my number for you!” But this objection did not last for long.
Unfortunately, despite the obvious hazard of writing my number down for the gum-smacking student volunteer running the check-ins for the counseling office, I couldn’t make an appointment without coughing it up. I had to write my identity on an appointment request slip for every appointment I made. I even had to give it to the student technician who took the snap-shot for my school ID. Though all this seemed counter intuitive, it had become the status quo, and nobody else seemed to be bothered by it.
WELL, MAYBE THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We have probably all heard some news about the recent security breach of the database at UCLA. To me, it is no surprise that our colleges and universities are unable to keep our information safe. If someone wanted to, they could obtain the identities of countless students and staff just by looking through the paper trash of the student services offices, let alone hacking into the computers themselves.
Aside from the recent UCLA breach, since 2003, there have been a staggering number of security breaches involving student information of the databases at universities and colleges in the United States. The amount of affected students multiplies exponentially when one considers that the hacking is usually not discovered right away. Not only can hackers access the sensitive information of students that are currently enrolled at any given institution, but also to the information held on years worth of past students. The databases which have been compromised since 2003 include, but are not limited to, those of the following schools; The Metropolitan State College in Colorado, University of Southern California, University of Texas at Austin, Boston College, Harvard business school, Duke business school, Stanford business school, Georgian Institute of Technology, University of Georgia, University of Southern Carolina, University of Delaware, Ohio University, Indiana University, UC Berkeley, George Mason University in Virginia, and UC San Diego. 

12-14-2006

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UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!!

On an ABC News video that I found on Yahoo, a clip from a news reel reported that the IRS has recently admitted to a MAJOR boo boo.
The IRS accidentally payed 200 million dollars in spurious tax refunds. But investigators of the treasury say that it was more like 300+ million that was shelled out to tax cheats. Experts say that the blunder will cost honest taxpayers a bundle.
Apparently the computer software system that the IRS was using failed to detect bogus tax exemptions and other red flags as it was supposed to. The fraudulent claims would not have slipped under the radar, had the IRS not disabled their back-up system, this even though the makers of the software said that all the glitches would not be worked out in time for tax season.
Of course, being the hard-nosed lot that they are, the IRS decided to ignore the warnings of the software maker, and used the faulty software anyway.
I think that, since tax payers have to pay for mistakes they make on tax forms, maybe the IRS should foot the bill for their mistake. BUT NO!!!!
Instead the 320 million dollar bill has been passed down to honest tax paying citizens.
The IRS has become a dictatorship, and there is nothing that honest people can do to fight it.
Have any of you ever been investigated for tax problems? Well I have, and I can tell you that they are convinced of your guilt, and the normal legal mandate of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ goes out the window.
The IRS does everything in its power to make the process of proving yourself innocent as difficult as possible. They ignore your phone calls until deadlines have passed. They tell you that if you want to talk in person to someone, you have to travel out of state. They speak to you as though you are a lying, unintelligent, dirt-bag. And there is NOTHING you can do about it.
I speak from experience, when I was a food server in college I was diligent about claiming every single dollar I made, so that I would never have to worry about getting busted. But my honesty did me no good. The IRS came into the corporate office of my restaurant branch and said that all the servers were making 25% to 30% tips on every bill, and that since they had not equivalent taxes, they were all being audited.
Obviously this percentage was ridiculous, imaginary, and completely unrealistic. And the IRS guy was miraculously unavailable for contact. In fact, it seemed that nobody was available to discuss anything, they just kept raising the interest on what I “owed”.

12-13-2006

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A New Kind of Christmas Carol

1) I finally decided that since the holiday temperatures where I live have only recently stopped reaching highs in the 90’s, I would make my December more festive by buying a candle that smells like Christmas . . . .

‘Jingle smells, Jingle smells, Jingle all the way’
‘Oh what fun it is to sniff a spicy-pine scented can-DLE!’

2) Yesterday on Good Morning America, the news-folk featured a product called ‘Insta-snow’. It’s made out of the same material used in diapers to absorb liquid. You just add water, and POOF . . . .

‘Have a synthetic, polymer Christmas’
‘It’s the best time of the year’
‘Say hello to plastic snow’
‘That spreads fake Christmas cheer’

3) Don’t laugh, but I’ve never eaten chestnuts. So I bought some, and tried to heat them by the only means familiar to me in this age of techno-mania . . . .

‘Chestnuts exploding in the microwave’
‘Scrubbing chunks off of the walls’
‘Maybe I should have grown them myseeeeelf’
‘Instead of buying chestnuts in a can’

12-12-2006

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Produce Strikes Back!!!

Anybody remember that bizarre, yet totally awesome, cartoon from the early 90’s called Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?
Well, it seems to me that the last quarter of 2006 is shaping up to be the real life sequel of the loony cartoon. Only this time, the gamut of garish grocery items has been expanded to other parts of the produce aisle.
In October we had spiteful spinach. Beginning in late November we had vile chives from chalupa-ville (Taco Bell). A few days ago, Jamba Juice announced a strawberry scare.

Forget being hit by a car when you cross the street. The real danger now-a-days is healthy food(?) Everybody’s so concerned with eating organically, with the fastest route from soil to stomach. But according to the FDA, that is just the problem. Fresh foods, especially ready-made, uncooked fruits and vegetables, are high risk foods because they are often consumed without being washed or otherwise processed in a way that would pulverize the pathogens.
 
The Jamba Juice strawberries that were suspected of contamination by Listeria monocytogenes were frozen!!!! I’m wondering what a quick rinse would have done to cleanse spinach that freezing would NOT have done to sanitize the strawberries.

Then there are the E. coli-tainted chives that have prompted the family of a young boy in New York to sue Taco Bell Corp. on the grounds that the restaurant chain was negligent.
This despite the voluntary and immediate recall that Taco Bell issued for chives, and their temporary shut-down of several restaurant locations that were suspected in the outbreak.
Jamba Juice was equally prompt in dealing with the suspected contamination, tossing even batches of strawberries that were not believed to be affected and cleaning all their stores. It sounds to me like the appropriate steps were made to take care of the problem, at least in terms of the handling of the produce once it was out of the field.

Who is really to blame in these cases?
It’s not that much of a separation for people to sue the makers of door handles from which they pick up rotavirus or a common cold. Or maybe we should sue the makers of pharmaceuticals for not inventing a drug to cure something, which is negligent because if they could make it, we wouldn’t get sick. I don’t know, sometimes I wonder if the legal system works as it is intended to.
Not that people shouldn’t be protected, or advocated for, but come on! You can sue someone for doing something to you, but you shouldn’t be able to sue someone for not stopping something from happening to you. It all seems backward, somehow.

12-11-2006

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Their own language…

http://www.slate.com/id/2154992/?nav=fix

This article caught my attention because the writer used the terms “Republicanspeak” and “Democraticspeak”, which vaguely reminded me of one of my favorite books, 1984.  However, the article highlights some interesting points about the key words that both parties try to exploit.  If they keep this up, in a few years, no one will know exactly what Republicans and Democrats are talking about.  Or wait, does anyone really know right now?

 

12-08-2006

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