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Well, okay, one rant, and one observation.
The rant follows thusly:
The observation follows thusly:
The rant follows thusly:
You know in all those shows were we've got the heroes, and they're on the side of angels, but currently they're doing some slightly-to-majorly illegal style things like breaking-and-entering and skulking illegally around the villain's house/workshop/factory/whatever?
Why in Someone's name do none of them ever put some gloves on?
Seriously. Fingerprinting has been around for the last century. Many of these guys have experience as either petty criminals or with law enforcement itself. And yet they're wandering around soon-to-be crimescenes, fondling the evidence, leaving prints all over computer keypads, locks, broken windows, the odd bit of crucial evidence, usually in the form of bits of paper that they just have to pick up, barehanded, and examine. I mean, it's not like gloves are expensive, or anything. Even pick the thing up in your sleeve, if you have to. For crying out loud!
Basic precautions, people. On the wicked side of the line, it might help you not get caught. On the good side of the line, it might help if you stopped fouling the evidence.
Just ... stop picking up/fondling/poking the cool interesting things in the criminal's house with your bare hands, okay? If you're going to engage in a little B&E for justice, at least be fucking professional about it. *grumps*
[Um. Not that I'm advocating anyone engage in B&E at all. It's just that I spend so many of those scenes in TV/Film listening to the rising chant in the back of my head: "Fingerprints, fingerprints, fingerprints, your goddamn fingerprints, you idiot, will you just put a pair of gloves on! It's not hard." *grins sheepishly*]
Why in Someone's name do none of them ever put some gloves on?
Seriously. Fingerprinting has been around for the last century. Many of these guys have experience as either petty criminals or with law enforcement itself. And yet they're wandering around soon-to-be crimescenes, fondling the evidence, leaving prints all over computer keypads, locks, broken windows, the odd bit of crucial evidence, usually in the form of bits of paper that they just have to pick up, barehanded, and examine. I mean, it's not like gloves are expensive, or anything. Even pick the thing up in your sleeve, if you have to. For crying out loud!
Basic precautions, people. On the wicked side of the line, it might help you not get caught. On the good side of the line, it might help if you stopped fouling the evidence.
Just ... stop picking up/fondling/poking the cool interesting things in the criminal's house with your bare hands, okay? If you're going to engage in a little B&E for justice, at least be fucking professional about it. *grumps*
[Um. Not that I'm advocating anyone engage in B&E at all. It's just that I spend so many of those scenes in TV/Film listening to the rising chant in the back of my head: "Fingerprints, fingerprints, fingerprints, your goddamn fingerprints, you idiot, will you just put a pair of gloves on! It's not hard." *grins sheepishly*]
The observation follows thusly:
I was reading the prequel to the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, recently. It's set in the time of Solomon (as in the Biblical one). There's just this throwaway line in there, about how there are legends circulating in that time about the lost cities of Ur and Sumer, disappeared into the desert over a thousand years ago.
And it just ... A lot of the time, we tend to think of the past as one big ball. That cities lost for thousands of years tend to be the domain of the modern period, because, you know, we're the present and they're the past. Forgetting, of course, that the past is not one place, but a series, and each of those pasts was, for one moment, a present. So. Even three thousand years ago in the reign of Solomon, there were legends of cities that had been lost a thousand, two, four thousand years previously. I mean, the earliest settlement at Jericho was some eleven thousand years ago. Catalhoyuk existed from around ten thousand years ago to just under eight thousand. People think Ancient Egypt was some sort of big ball of history that happened all at once, when in fact it spanned some three thousand years and quite a few changes all by its lonesome.
And on a global scale, it's actually cooler again. Because things happening in one area are different from things happening in other areas, and sometimes you just would not believe was sorts of things were actually contemporaneous to each other. For example, I think there's a 12th century AD Indian manuscript of the Buddha showing a hand grenade. Because the Chinese were fooling around with gunpowder from the 9th century up. Um. Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, anyone? *grins* It's just ... Pick a century. Forget befores and after. Just pick a century, and have a look at what was happening during that century around the world. (In the 30th century BC, for example, we've got the Minoan civilisation in the Mediterranean, the Norte Chico in Peru, the Early Harappan in the Indus Valley, the Liangzhu in China, a united Egypt, and Stonehenge starting to go up. And that's before most of them start interacting). I like the 14th century AD, too. And the 6th BC. 5th AD, 9th AD. ... Okay, I sort of like all of them. ('Like' meaning, 'am fascinated by', you understand).
The past has a lot of parts, is my point. Every period of the past had, in fact, more past beyond it of its own. *smiles faintly* And it's nice when you find a little something that just ... puts that out there, and reminds you. Heh. History/prehistory is big and intricate, and a continuous happening, and patchworked across the whole globe at every point of it, and it's not just one big bundle of stuff that you can plonk in a book. Heh.
And it just ... A lot of the time, we tend to think of the past as one big ball. That cities lost for thousands of years tend to be the domain of the modern period, because, you know, we're the present and they're the past. Forgetting, of course, that the past is not one place, but a series, and each of those pasts was, for one moment, a present. So. Even three thousand years ago in the reign of Solomon, there were legends of cities that had been lost a thousand, two, four thousand years previously. I mean, the earliest settlement at Jericho was some eleven thousand years ago. Catalhoyuk existed from around ten thousand years ago to just under eight thousand. People think Ancient Egypt was some sort of big ball of history that happened all at once, when in fact it spanned some three thousand years and quite a few changes all by its lonesome.
And on a global scale, it's actually cooler again. Because things happening in one area are different from things happening in other areas, and sometimes you just would not believe was sorts of things were actually contemporaneous to each other. For example, I think there's a 12th century AD Indian manuscript of the Buddha showing a hand grenade. Because the Chinese were fooling around with gunpowder from the 9th century up. Um. Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, anyone? *grins* It's just ... Pick a century. Forget befores and after. Just pick a century, and have a look at what was happening during that century around the world. (In the 30th century BC, for example, we've got the Minoan civilisation in the Mediterranean, the Norte Chico in Peru, the Early Harappan in the Indus Valley, the Liangzhu in China, a united Egypt, and Stonehenge starting to go up. And that's before most of them start interacting). I like the 14th century AD, too. And the 6th BC. 5th AD, 9th AD. ... Okay, I sort of like all of them. ('Like' meaning, 'am fascinated by', you understand).
The past has a lot of parts, is my point. Every period of the past had, in fact, more past beyond it of its own. *smiles faintly* And it's nice when you find a little something that just ... puts that out there, and reminds you. Heh. History/prehistory is big and intricate, and a continuous happening, and patchworked across the whole globe at every point of it, and it's not just one big bundle of stuff that you can plonk in a book. Heh.
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