Actually, have they changed laws so you can get stopped for not wearing a belt? Because it's a lame-assed law if you can't get busted for it on its own.

In Washington state, yes, you can be stopped if not wearing your seatbelt is your only visible violation.

In California they can pull you over for being beltless. Been there, done that, ended up with a warning.

I thought it was weird that, for a time or in some places, you wouldn't get smacked down for being beltless unless you'd aroused the cop's suspicion some other way.

Easy for me to say -- I'm always belted.

I can't take seriously the idea that, because he didn't do one semester's lab work, he didn't deserve his PhD or his career as a chemist.

No, sure. But if he'd failed that class, would that have ruined his chances of ever getting his PhD or being a chemist? I'm not saying cheaters (and I'm not including your father in this, but moving on) are The Bad and should be impaled on spikes as a warning to others, nor am I denying there are ever mitigating circumstances (I'm not a fan of zero-tolerance policies for most things). But it does go on, to the extent that some people who don't deserve their grades or degrees get them, and that I think is serious enough to at least pass on to the teacher the question of what should be done in a particular case. (And indeed, you should use your own judgment. But I think a blanket policy of never snitching is a bad idea.)

Agree with you on the respect for teacher, totally. Which is why I find the "Take the test butt naked with a gag and earplugs because we don't trust you not to cheat" policy such a stupid response.

A friend who teaches at a local college said that she had students copying answers from their neighbors, even though to prevent that the students were given two different, color-coded versions of the test, so the students were copying answers for different questions. At that point, it becomes more a test of "just how stupid are you."

Possibly not quite as stupid as this - my mom had a couple of (university-level) students who plagairized off the handout.

Florida just passed a similiar seatbelt law. I know that before if you got your belt on before they stopped you the police generally wouldn't ticket you for not wearing a seatbelt but a coworker got pulled over for both speeding and not wearing a seatbelt and the fine was pretty steep.

I have cheated once or twice, including once in college (I looked something up in a book on a closed-book take-home final). I did not turn myself in, though maybe I should have, and thus got an A- instead of the B+ I deserved in the class. Of course, since the class was graded using a scale decided before the final I chose (it was curved, but only using data from before the final), I technically may not have even committed an honor code violation, as nobody in the Caltech community was really taken advantage of - not that that makes it morally right. I never did it again, however, so my self-guilt taught me my lesson.

Had I been caught and turned in, the most likely result would have been me confessing, and either having the questions I looked up counted off (which might have dropped me to a B, but probably still a B+, in the class) or having to take the final again. For a first offense like that, there would have been no punitive damages to speak of, and it certainly wouldn't have gone on any sort of record. My GPA would have been mostly unharmed, and I would never have cheated again.

The reasonableness of that is why I wouldn't feel guilt for turning in others, as Strega says above. We had a good system going, and people who are cheating for complicated reasons that I can't judge, well, that would get taken into account by the Board of Control. If I went to a school with a no-compromises one-cheat-and-you're-out policy, I would never dream of reporting anybody, ever. At that stage, you're living in a fascist regime and you fight against it. I did fight against many other policy decisions at Tech, but it was all behavioral - the honor code itself was never something i felt any qualms about fighting for.

In California they can pull you over for being beltless. Been

Wow, that could play havoc with your master plans.

I thought it was weird that, for a time or in some places, you wouldn't get smacked down for being beltless unless you'd aroused the cop's suspicion some other way.

Really? I mean, by law, or just because it's kind of hard to tell if someone's beltless unless you pull them over for reckless driving first?

I mean, by law, or just because it's kind of hard to tell if someone's beltless unless you pull them over for reckless driving first?

In Michigan, it was by law, because I remember bitching at the idea of changing it, that it might be a way for cops to nose their way into people's cars and find evidence of other stuff.

Which just makes me go @@ and suggest the criminals put on their seat belts.