Nerve Endings Firing Away

Fresh from the Terri Schiavo case debates, lately almost everything seems like irrational interference by government or corporations in public policy issues. Just surfing around, I spotted few examples in recent times:

North Carolina (along with a dozen other states) has a law that prohibits unmarried couples from staying together. The only thing that stops the police from rampantly arresting cohabiting couple is the almost total absence of implementation. Imagine if a moralizing “law-abiding” Sheriff was elected to office?

Some pharmacists are refusing to fill prescription for birth control in accordance with their religious beliefs (The Catholic Church still speaks against condoms although almost 80% of American Catholics support birth control). Does the law allow pharmacist the “right to refuse service” on grounds of their moral and religious beliefs? In the Middle East, even non-Muslims aren’t allowed to eat publicly during the month of Ramadan, but then no one wants to piss them off because they have oil.

I emailed a friend in India with Hola (Spanish for hello) in the subject line. She responded back that she didn’t get the email because according to their network security folks, I had used an “unparliamentary” word in my email. But using the word in the text body was acceptable. It later turned out that they didn’t appreciate me saying, life is a bitch.  Hmmmm; .I understand that this is common practice in corporate offices in India i.e. to monitor employee emails. I am not sure whether I consider that appropriate; anyway why the distinction between the subject line and text body? Does using “unparliamentary” words in my personal emails, mostly to my friends through my corporate account (because the company will not allow me access to web-based emails) any business of the company? Nothing works for rekindling old memories among (guy) friends by swearing at each other; sadly the company thinks otherwise.

You have parents to shout, “don’t do this, don’t do that” and then you grow up and your government and company take the mantle of parenthood. Gah!