Dumpling in a Hanky

I'd never heard of the prolific forger "Antique" Smith before I saw the email notification about the talk on him from the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland. But I like archives, and history, and the fact there was a legal case that arose from it meant it sounded like an interesting outing. So last night I went along to the National Library of Scotland, where this talk was being hosted. So, what did I learn? Mr Alexander Howland "Antique" Smith had quite a busy time of it between 1887 and 1893, churning out at least 500+ known (at a conservative estimate) forged manuscripts and letters attributed to a wide variety of well known people over all sorts of time periods. However, he seems to have had a particular liking for Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott....or maybe they were just more saleable items! He was trained as a law clerk, in the firm of Thomas Henry Ferrier WS, and it seems that old legal documents stored in the firm may have been the early sourc...

So, I work in a law firm, I deal with law-type stuff…but it’s all commercial law. I’ve never dealt with criminal law, and have no real clue about how that all works. So, when I got my third call for jury duty in three years (the first two years they exempted me as my current and previous workplaces mean I know various legal types, and may have opinions that would render me biased, but this time I thought I’d go along anyway and they could dismiss me if they felt I was unlikely to be able to serve ), I turned up to the Sheriff Court like a good girl. And my, what a long, long, boring day that turned out to be! The juror citation letter said come in at 10, but call the helpline after 5pm the day before for more information. The phoneline says come in at 10.30. I arrived at 10.30, joined the queue of other people clutching letters, while we waited outside the designated court for 10 mins. We all filed in and sat down, all 60 plus of us, and the Clerk of court gave a 5 min brie...

If giving a fake name and date of birth to MySpace is a criminal act... Admittedly, I've not actually done anything criminal online, but I regularly make up a false date of birth / location / name when signing up to various websites. I refuse to give the real information when I beleive that all it'll be used for is to track what I'm doing on the site, and target marketing at me based on that information. Same reason that I don't have loyalty cards - if they want market research, they can put some work into it, rather than stalking my shopping habits! We're constantly being told to be more aware of how important and sensitive our personal information is, and not give it away without careful thought and consideration of the basis for the request for it. But by giving false information when we don't believe the request for out personal details are justified, we're breaching the terms and conditions of various sites. How can you win?