Good question: I am quite certain the people suing would lose in court, but there is also the question of which statute or law they could use to sue the employer. I mean, I can think of several but they'd all lead to quite expensive and embarrassing counterclaims for damage to the reputation of the business.

But in the final analysis, they could be sued.

The employer cannot be sued except if he was colluding or conspiring in the theft, or negligent in other ways (like not providing lockers and forcing you to leave bags outside in the open).

The government declaration is not a shield against liability - the privacy laws are. The employer is both not expected to know about convictions that are irrelevant to the line of work, but it's also illegal to check them via other means.

It's because the working class organizations (consumer organisations, trade unions) are so strong in most parts of the EU and especially Norway, they have gained a lot of rights and limitations to the powers of capital.Nothing inherently competent about the Norwegians - a competent crook is still competent after all - but the ability of companies to get away with things most people find offensive has been limited by rules like this.

I agree - you either can read it easily, or you need a course in reading cursive for specific purposes anyway. So teaching them at school is a bit overdone.

The only persons who will regret not writing cursive in school are jewellers, watchmakers and surgeons - the people who need highly evolved fine motor skills. That's difficult to (re-)gain when you're 18 or older, versus kids who have been writing cursive since age 6. But the question is: why subject the entire population to something only a few occupations will use.

So true - even the very clear and well-styled Sont toll registers are pretty hard to read nowadays. See http://dietrich.soundtoll.nl/s... for a nice example of handwriting from 1557, versus this one from 1712 (http://dietrich.soundtoll.nl/scans/toon.php?fnr=175&sid=10).

I can actually read the last one (it's about a boat from or to Harlingen, so a Dutch boat), but it's in Danish and that's not a language I can read easily even with modern type.

The obvious counterexamples to such conspiracy theorist are implementations in countries where the legal system does not base itself on a handwritten document for the constitution, and where this would be nonsensical to begin with. It's just as silly in the USA where I suppose there are machine readable versions available of every relevant document.

And while it's interesting that this is happening in Finland, it's been implemented for several years in The Netherlands already. And I'm sure, in Finland as well. Since the sky hasn't fallen down, I'm assuming impact on most children has been negligible. And the typing course my son received in exchange sure helps him a lot with his coursework on the computer. All of the children in his class leave school at age 12 with the ability to type blind with 10 fingers.

Or difficult enough to require a pretty intense course. In the Netherlands, we have at least a dozen wildly different medieval writing styles, not counting the handwriting of different writers. Given the changes in how to write the letters of the alphabet, grammar drift, and various attempts over the centuries to "modernize" the language and make it "easier to understand", reading old handwriting is nigh impossible without a decent course.

True, but this is par for the course with publishers, and one of the reasons the publishing sector is in bad straits. It's a buyers market and if you don't accept the conditions, your competitor will. So either you go out of business outright, or you merely run the risk of going out of business. Not a very enviable position to be in.

You're right, thanks.

IIRC, this was what killed off TRS (they of Dungeons and Dragons). They massively overextended by selling to a large buyer, who then proceeded to return all of the goods right before the deadline expired. They had to sell the company to either that party or someone else. So they sold themselves to Wizards of the Coast, to avoid having to sell to the original company that sank them.

The worse your business sector is doing as a whole, the more the predators and parasites come out and have a go at you.

I used to have no depth perspective from age 12 to about 20 because my lens was removed due to glaucoma. While playing baseball was something of a nightmare for me (try catching a ball without depth perspective - my main goal was to try and avoid the ball altogether), driving was never a problem. You just need to maintain a good distance from things, which is sensible advice for most drivers anyway.

Aha... so they made sure to select lucky people only. I understand. It's a good idea for a trial run :)

I personally think "weywot" is an abbreviated version of "wait... what?" - the astronomers exclamation upon discovering the object. It's currently my favorite Kuyper belt object name :)

Your initial point is fine: people rise to the expectations others have of them. Low expectations give lower results.

Your conclusion is flawed, however. My conclusions would be that we need to have higher expectations of kids, and if they fail, no problem - but they need to work at achieving the expected outcome (a good grade). I always tell my son that I know he's smart, but that it just means that for him, the lowest expectation for his grade is an A. If it doesn't work out that way, we look at what went wrong and learn from that. It's never "because you're dumb" but always "maybe you didn't start early enough with learning this?".

You can build up a good self-image in several ways, one of them is what I just described.

Unfortunately, another is to lower the bar for everyone so everyone thinks he's great: praise them for meaningless results, give out A's like candy. It's the easiest way for a teacher. But also the most insidious, vicious and harmful way for children - you're setting them up for failure later in life and then their self-esteem will take a great hit.