*50% of [US] Parents Won’t Let Their [10-year-old] Kids Go to Another Aisle in Grocery.*

Mohammad Yasin, member of the British Parliament, was about to fly to Canada as part of an official parliamentary visit, when he was stopped and questioned because — get this — his name was "Mohammad".

Not only is it crazy to stop a passenger who is an MP for that reason. It is crazy to stop any other passenger for that reason. If your security believes that being named "Mohammad" is a rational reason to suspect someone of anything, it is worse than incompetent.

An Australian city council has ceased its practice of Christian prayers at meetings, in the name of separation of church and state.

In the US we have to keep fightin against religious fanatics who try to impose their religion through government out of disrespect for people whose religious views differ from theirs.

A British TV company now requires all staff to declare all their sexual and romantic relationships, all "close" relationships, and all friendships, and all roommate relationships. This intolerable system of repression is the natural endpoint of the ever-increasing repression of office romances. It was always heading for this.

There are valid reasons for rules against office romances, but given the harm that those rules do even when not carried to these absurd extremes, the reasons are not strong enough to justify them.

Human beings need sexual relationships; human beings need love; human beings need friendship. If your main social contact is through work, where are you supposed to look for these things? Degrading yourself by running nonfree software such a dating app or Grindr? Going to a club (if you can look sharp enough to be allowed in) and getting drunk?

We had better adapt our rules to those human needs.

More people in the UK are using cash payments. I urge people in Britain to organize now to encourage the use of cash, and publicize all the nasty treatment you can avoid that way.

The organization could also campaign for requirements for stores to accept cash, and to situate an ATM in every settlement that is likely to have a family with no car.