Locker Room Etiquette

I know, I know, there is the climate thing in Copenhagen (even the man who walks on water is expected to say his HOPEful prayers and deliver suitably little, just before returning with his entourage, a squadron of vehicles and probably a few planes to where he came from). Goodness, what can I say, things are pretty obvious, I have little to add. I love the climate change denialists. Remarkable coalition of rightwingers and the usual rabble of fringe scientists. All quite funny, and boy, am I glad that I at least haven't bred. No kid to worry about too deeply when things go downhill. And I don't even drive or own a car... so I'm probably in the good books.

Now that that's out of the way, onto something slightly more serious. Gym locker rooms. No you gay guys, not that kind of locker room, go and rent your own video... - I mean real gym locker rooms. I went to the gym tonight, ran my 10k's, did weights, the lot. After about 2 hours I finally returned to the locker room, went to the locker, fiddled around with the combination lock and opened the locker. When I buy those combination locks each time I join a gym, I truly can't be bothered figuring out how to change the pre-set numbers. So, mine is always 000. Well, there I opened 'my' locker tonight. I ended up rumaging for awhile thru sort-of-interesting men's clothes, alas after awhile I realized that they were not mine at all. The number was right, the clothes were not. So, I ended up in another bloke's locker who obviously also couldn't be bothered changing his number. Being in a bit of a bind I tried to recall where I left my clothes this particular evening and settled for another locker. Same thing happened. Interesting clothes (lovely wallet, nice watch...), just not my stuff. Thankfully I got third-time lucky. I finally found my own stuff.

I was always suspicious about how many people can really be bothered to change those pre-set numbers, and by chance I discovered today that possibly not too many do. I am sure that what happened to me tonight happened to other folks, too (did you like my clothes by any chance? leave a note next time you accidentally drop in :).

So, how come that in all those many years I have not once had any of my property stolen in the gym. I had things stolen just about everywhere else, at home, from the hotel room, even in front of police stations, but never in the gym. Is it possible that folks who do the gym regularly and keep fit are nicer people? Are they in the average more ethical than folks doing no sport? Questions, and more questions, anyone up for a research project?

Irish Catholic Church in fight for donations

Funny story on the BBC news website (thanks Darragh - again). A Catholic priest in Ireland urges his followers not to donate to beggars standing outside the church doors, and asks instead that they give their money to him. The argument, it seems, is that the beggars might use the money on themselves (unlike his organisation with sends quite a bit of what it collects on to its Politbuero in Rome). Worse, as he explains, these beggars might be remote controlled by evil third parties - very much unlike his organisation.

Just so that his followers get the message, he explains that not giving to beggars when one could also hand cash over to the church doesn't violate bible tenets. There you go :-). Of course, as we all know, the church has not only problems with church staffers going after young boys, nope, there's also ... well... interest in other people's money.