If it hadn't happened in my part of the world, I would have laughed myself silly. But honestly, what are those feds thinking, charging these people?
It would be one thing if the two flour strewers were trying to scare everyone. I can see bringing a case based on yelling "fire!" (or "flour!") in a crowded theater. But the silly defendants were just having fun without thinking of the Huge Terror of white powdery substances. They were even trying to be responsible -- they had been using chalk but went back to flour because it's biodegradable
What should be a charming, silly incident is going to end up a pain in the butt for a couple of misguided runners. And it's making the feds look over-reactive and silly and that's really, really scary.
two face charges in Ikea Flour incident
Hide your children--these people are part of a club that sprinkles flour around.
Usually biased stories bug me, but not in this case. It's clear that the reporter on this story is rolling her eyes about the Homeland Security overresponse. Looks like anyone with sense, left or right, would do an eye roll right along with her. In fact it looks like the comments over at the Courant, often fairly conservative, are all along the lines of the "whattheheck are the feds thinking?"
Not very well, I think.
The federal government is using its little tiny lizard fear brain 24/7. The instinctive flight or fight part of the brain that comes out when the upper levels of thought go into duck and cover. And yeah, it's important to have that flight fight thing for emergencies, but that's the part of the brain we need to keep an eye on when it takes over, dudes. And the feds seem determined to keep that part of the brain in charge, always. Not the way to run a society. Orange alert! Red alert! Check any Cheers and Jeers to see when we've been in Blue or Green (answer: never ever. Be Afraid! Or the terrorists will have lulled you into false sense of security thus allowing them to possibly win!)
Back to the flour-sprinklers\s (who belong to a club that's been doing this activity for 77 years.):
"It was absolutely not in any way what we intended and not what we anticipated," Daniel Salchow said Friday at the New Haven courthouse.
Salchow, a New Haven ophthalmologist, and his sister, who is visiting from Hamburg, Germany, were charged with first-degree breach of peace, a felony.
The siblings are part of the Hash House Harriers, which bills itself as a "drinking club with a running problem" and has more than 1,800 chapters around the world. The runs typically end with beer stops at pubs or homes.
The club started in Malaysia in the late 1930s, when British citizens modified an old game called hares and hounds.
The Salchows said they have sprinkled flour everywhere from New York to California without incident.
It could be argued that these two need lives that aren't straight of a PG Wodehouse novel (won't hear me arguing it, though. I'd much rather live in a Wodehouse reality than the fed tiny-brain one) but it most definitely should be argued that the feds should now apologize, maybe put out a humorous press release about "whoops, but watch yerselves with that white powder" and the back off.
Salchow and his sister are due in court mid-September. Maybe they'll come before a judge with some sense.