dumb library

I recently learned about something called the Future Library Project and think it's about one of the dumbest ideas I've heard about in quite a while.

The concept is simple: starting in 2014, and for a hundred years years thereafter, a foundation collects a manuscript a year from a well known writer and then puts that in a vault where no one will ever see it. In 2114, the vault will be opened and the one hundred manuscripts inside will finally be published.

That means we can never read anything put in the vault during our lifetimes, given it will not be open until after we're all dead. Only babies born now and thereafter have any chance of reading what's inside but only when they're very old.

Every library should be open and accessible to as many people as practicable. Deliberately hiding books in a closed library serves no purpose.

I'd like to read two of the books already in the library. But I'll never have that chance nor will you. Unless medicine progresses in the next few decades that allows us all to live to be 150.

goodbye geoffrey

If you're a millennial like me, the picture seen below might make you choke up a bit, as it did for me. Our neighborhood had a smallish toy store that I liked more than Toys R Us as a child, as I guess atmosphere and not volume made the difference for me, but was I was taken to the big chain on occasion, which I never minded.

All of the Toys R Us stores in the US will be closed by tomorrow, thanks to their bankruptcy. Their Australian stores will close later this year (they're actually owned by a different failing corporate entity so were not affected by the American bankruptcy.

How the hell did this company fail? I know the technical reason -- they had too much debt -- but why did they did they get in a position where they borrowed so much? I'm guessing it had something to do with multiple corporate acquisitions.

It's curious to me how some companies think they must grow constantly. Instead of focusing on being the most profitable, they try to be the biggest, but then they kite up their balance sheet with a huge amount of debt and that starts a downward spiral.

Meanwhile, my brother tells me that the independently owned smallish bookstore from our childhood is still operating and, at some point, opened a second store. Sounds like they realized a respectable profit was a worthier goal than massively leveraged expansion.

heather locklear's very bad month

Heather Locklear once made headlines as a big television star, but these days when she's in the news, it's because of a scandal. Since 2008, she's had numerous appearances in the tabloids because of arrests and substance abuse problems.

And 2018 has been a rough year for her. She was arrested in February and charged with domestic violence and three counts of battery on a police officer after allegedly kicking three sheriff's deputies and threatening to shoot them.

This month she went from the proverbial frying pan into the fire. Last week, after allegedly threatening to shoot herself, she was taken into custody and involuntarily hospitalized under what is known in California as a 5150 hold, where a law enforcement officer can order someone to be held for 72 hours for psychiatric evaluation.

After being released later in the week, last Saturday she was once again arrested for battery and taken into custody after reportedly attacking a deputy and EMT first responder. Two days later, on Monday of this week, she was rushed by ambulance to the hospital after a reported overdose.

A few months shy of fifty-seven, Locklear still works but not with the roles and prominence she once had. She has become a sad cliche, the fading star past her prime who begins to spiral out of control.

Hopefully she'll be able to get her shit reasonably back together soon. Age is a bastard but no more so than in Tinseltown.

stiff

I just finished reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach. A fascinating book, it's part history/part explainer about the many uses (and abuses) of people's bodies after death.

While some passages of the book describe matters that are truly disgusting, she has a light, slightly irreverent tone about them so these are never disturbing. Indeed, I found the chapter on decomposition studies to be both compelling and gross yet arguably the best one in the book.

A few chapters are underwhelming, like one dealing with crucifixion. And at times, the author seems to be focusing more on death than her more specialized topic about the use of corpses. Her next book after Stiff deals with death, so she was jumping the gun on her research.

All in all, however, these flaws don't detract from the book, which is both memorable and highly recommended.

fermi foolishness

I don't generally read Reason because I think much of libertarianism involves magical thinking, but this non-political article did catch my eye, which concludes that humans are likely alone in the universe.

IMHO, there's no rational nor scientific way to conclude this. At the heart of the linked argument is a reconsideration of the so-called Fermi Paradox, which holds that our planet should already have been visited by extraterrestrials if they existed; therefore, they don't exist.

Off the top of my head, and quickly, I can think of a lot of reasons other worlds would have no interest in visiting us. We may have nothing to offer them. We may seem too violent. We may be far less interesting than other alien species.

As well, other worlds could have advanced civilizations but saw no reason to develop space travel. Given that Earth's space programs really grew out of the Cold War, and were at their heart about military issues, if a civilization was entirely pacifistic, they may have never had a reason to visit space.

And, of course, such discussions presuppose we have not yet been visited. But what proof is there they haven't already been here and saw utterly no reason to contact us?

fitted sheet frustrations

A few days back, I happened to see a rather lengthy tutorial online about how to fold a fitted sheet. It's certainly not the first one of those I've seen and certainly not the last.

I long ago gave up on trying to learn how to fold fitted sheets. If you're in housekeeping for a hotel, you need know this. But unless you're extremely anal retentive, you don't need to bother for your home linen cupboard.

You can also solve this problem after washing your sheets by simply putting them back on the bed where they were earlier in the day. When you want to wash your sheets, don't strip the bed and put on a different set. Simply leave the bed unmade until you run the washer and dryer.

If you must fold a fitted sheet, I recommend just laying it on a table, rough folding it so it's fairly flat and smooth, and then put it under the fully folded top sheet in the cupboard. Life is too short to spend any more time on them than that.

surfing or skateboarding?

California legislators are locked in a fierce battle these days over what should be the state's official sport, surfing or skateboarding.

I have never participated in either pasttime, but as a former Californian, I think skateboarding would be a more representative sport. You see far more skateboarders than surfers, at least in metro Los Angeles and any of the more southern communities I saw. And, you can skateboard in many parts of the state where surfing would be imposs

With that said, what does it matter? Why are elected officials wasting even four seconds on this nonsense? The state has plenty more pressing issues that should be the focus of their undivided attention.

Declare them both the official state sport and leave it at that. Move on to something that's actually important.

baby jumpers

Each June since the early 1600s, the Spanish village of Castrillo de Murcia holds their El Salto del Colacho festival. Grown men run through the village streets dressed like devils and jump over mattresses, each holding five or six babies.

Not surprisingly, it is a huge tourist draw. The ceremony is said to ensure the infants have a safe life and protects them against illness and evil.

I don't know about you, but no child of mine would be left on the street for some drunken fool to stumble and fall on. Maybe in 1631 this seemed like a good idea, but it certainly doesn't seem like one in 2018.

The babies are completely unprotected against any possible mishap. I can't imagine in nearly four hundred years that tragedy has never struck.

It's also amazing to me how a parent would expose a child to the actual potential of harm to "protect" against an imaginary harm. That's like deciding to leave your child locked in a hot car in a supermarket parking lot to "protect" the kid from being snatched out of your basket inside the store.

volkswagon idiots

I was reading offline about how the CEO of Volkswagon's parent company was arrested earlier in the week as part of the ongoing emissions scandal. To date, seven or eight executives at the company have been arrested, the company has paid billions in fines, been sued in hundreds of class-action civil suits, and will lose countless billions in profits.

It makes you wonder what all these well paid, obviously smart people were thinking when they cooked up this scheme. Based on what I've read, it looks like great risk for a not substantial reward for most involved. And it ended up proving the old maxim -- the more people involved in a conspiracy, the more likely it is to explode.

You really have to wonder if Volkswagen AG, the parent company, will ultimately survive the debacle. The costs have been and continue to be staggering. The badly tranished public image will not change for a long time.

And, of course, many innocent people will be harmed by this scandal -- the VW workers who incomes will be curbed as a result and the VW owners with vehicles now worth less and harder to resell.

The only thing good that will come out of this is probably a really good book or two or more and a compelling limited-run series. You can probably bet a safe amount that both are already in the works.

psycho magnet

I've written on this blog twice recently about discovering the books of Peter Swanson, and I am back today to report I just finished the third of his four novels, Her Every Fear. I liked this one quite a lot, too, but I don't think quite as much as his second book.

The style and storytelling shows that he's growing as a writer. It's a really creepy, edgy story. Every major character except one is neurotic in some way and flawed. At one point, the most neurotic characters wonders why she's a psycho magnet -- her words -- which sounds delusional at the time she says it, but she turns out to be correct.

I particularly liked how the writer makes the reader wonder if we're dealing with some unreliable narrators. Did the character really experience that or was that just his or her delusions?

I thought the book's ending, however, was a bit of a letdown. It certainly resolved the story, but the tension and building jeopardy was so strong, I was expecting a really interesting twist.

It wasn't horrible, but it was a rather predictable ending. Given the writer's first two novels had much more unpredictable and somewhat ambiguous endings, I was expecting something more memorable.

Nonetheless, I recommend because it's an enjoyable, fast-paced read. I reached the top of our library's hold list for his latest novel, so I should be starting on that in a few days.

the little shop of horrors is real

I happened to read this scary article about a really big weed invading the United States that can cause severe burns if you merely touch it and could cause blindness. And the thing is really freaking big.

I immediately forwarded the article to my uncle and cousins in Pennsylvania, who had never heard of the thing. Plants growing in the wild have been found in New York state, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and other northeast states, some northwest states, and parts of Canada. It's also found in Europe and New Zealand.

Called by various names but most commonly "the giant hogweed," it can grow as high as eighteen feet tall. The leaves can be huge -- several feet across -- and the blossoms are large, white and clustered a bit like Queen Anne's Lace.

Like many invasive plants and animals, it was originally brought to North America and Europe as an ornamental plant in the early twentieth century. It's amazing how people in past eras didn't think doing something like this could cause a major problem down the road.

While not technically like Audrey the killer plant in Little Shop of Horrors, it's awfully close.

munchausen syndrome by proxy

Down here in Australia, this incident from earlier in the month is still garnering press coverage.

As a mother of small children, I have a difficult time sympathizing with a mother who harms her children. At the same time, I know that munchausen syndrome by proxy is real, albeit rare, so the mom may be seriously ill herself.

That may be the explanation; it may not be. Whether or not it is, however, the incident raises some important and troubling questions that need answers.

How was it that a teenage mother with a mental health history had unsupervised and complete childrearing responsibilities and?

Did no one else see any indications the child in question may have been drugged?

I think the mother's community may not be entirely without fault here. If you see a troubled parent abusing a child in any way, is it immoral to just look the other way?

Thinking way back to when I lived in Nevada, one time I was entering a large supermarket when a young father of about thirty who was a large man smacked his young child really hard in the mouth when the latter wouldn't stop acting up.

Many people coming and going out of the store stopped and immediately confronted the father. Tempers flared. Shouting was heard. Someone called the police, who arrived to mediate. I don't know the outcome.

Back to the Australian mother: one element of munchausen syndrome by proxy involves the mother weaving elaborate tales to hide the fact that she's abusing her own child. Many time, true munchausens involves a child made ill by the sick parent, and that may well be the story here.

But our modern society is failing somehow if this sort of thing was happening right under people's noses and no one said anything.

felony for $400 alex

One of my daydream fantasies is to be a contestant on American television's Jeopardy! When I lived in the States, I watched regularly. Down under, I can only see the episodes if I download them from a filesharing site.

So I found this article about the recent criminal conviction of a Jeopardy! champion to be of interest. While larger news outlets have also covered the story, the most detail can be found in the local press I've linked where the prosecution occurred.

This case provides a good example of how sometimes very smart people do stupid things and how generally honest people can nonetheless commit felonies if they're not careful. But who didn't know that was she was doing was a crime?

With that said, I think a felony conviction for a non-widescale hacking where no financial gain was involved is too harsh. Why should a nonviolent person like this spend a day behind bars?

I think the real remedy here should be in the civil system. The victims could sue for invasion of privacy. Maybe they already have.

Make the perpetrator pay for the wrongdoing through civil monetary damages, not in the criminal justice system. But in the crime linked here, by the time the defendant has paid for the criminal defense, there may be no more personal assets to compensate the actual victims who were hacked.

Save law enforcement resources and court prosecution for hackers who go after people's money and other assets. Unwarranted snooping shouldn't go unpunished, but a criminal court isn't the best place to remedy that.

cleavage eyesore

The unknown woman seen below has covered almost all of her cleavage with a quite ordinary and unremarkable tattoo that has a clip art vibe to it. She will now wear that think on full display until they day she's put in a coffin.

The only way she can effectively hide that now is with something substantial like a crew-neck sweater. But that's not exactly practical beach wear.

She's obviously proud of her new tattoo, as is revealed by her beaming smile in the photo. If only she had a friend who told her before she got that it was a really bad idea.

lucas davenport

I wrote recently about how I had read nearly everything written by John Sandford, and now I have read absolutely everything. I finished his most recent book Twisted Prey a few days ago, his twenty-eighth novel featuring a character named Lucas Davenport who has held a variety of law enforcement jobs.

Sandford is a fairly prolific author, having written more than fifty novels since his first in 1989. They are more thrillers than mysteries because the criminal(s) is/are identified early in the book; the mystery involves how law enforcement pros will solve the seemingly unsolveable case.

I don't think Twisted was one of Sandford's best. It was entertaining and engaging but seemed to run out of energy and originality toward the end. He brought back a particularly terrific villain from one of his recent earlier novels, but this time she was a pale shadow of her earlier appearance.

Nonetheless, I'll look forward to more of his books because they're often quite atmospheric and original with all kinds of great insights into life and people. Sandford is obviously a very observant man and his sharp eye is always revealed in vivid detail.

Sandford is a former journalist in real life, like some other popular crime writers, and he's keenly observant of how the media can shape how the public perceives a story and how politicians and cops can manipulate the media. Some of his most vivid characters are the supporting players who are reporters.

I told my husband the other night that if Lucas was a real person, I could definitely see myself attracted to him in real life if I encountered him. I think that's because there are certain things about the husband and the fictional cop that are quite similar, and maybe that's why I've always enjoyed Sandford's books where he's featured.

So if you ever want some brain candy escapism and haven't yet given Sandford a try, he's highly recommended by me and many others, if you look at his Goodread and Amazon pages.

splitsifornia

A ballot measure to split California into three separate states has qualified for the November 2018 election in the Golden State.

Some of the arguments in favor of this make sense, but at the same time, a state boundary that has existed since 1850 seems somehow sacrosanct. Dividing California would be like dividing Manhattan into three cities or splitting Texas in half.

This is certainly not the first attempt to split the state into parts, and all of the past efforts have failed somewhere along the way. While the pending measure has more money and organization behind it, the chances are nonetheless miniscule.

So if you were calculating possibilities, you might rank it above the chance of virgin birth but below the chance of buying a winning lottery ticket today.

breadcrumb hint

I'm back today with another one of my hopefully helpful household hints.

You know how the bottom of the bag in any dry cereal has a bunch of ground-up fibers and fragments that broke off whole pieces? I'll tell you about a use for those.

Now some people just add that schmutz to the cereal, but much of it will float on the milk and not end up being eaten.

Here's my suggestion: collect those fragments in a clean plastic jar. Then after you have a cup or more, use it in place of bread crumbs for any recipe requiring them.

So, for instance, instead of using bread crumbs to mix in something like meatloaf or fish cakes, use an equivalent amount of broken up cereal pieces rescued from the bottom of cereal bags. It'll add an interesting flavor and a nice consistency.

Now you can't use every cereal for this. Things like Trix and Cocoa Puffs would not work. But it works great with "basic" cereals like corn flakes, rice puffs, shreaded wheat, bran flakes, etc.

You can also substitute only half of the breadcrumbs in a recipe, if you want, in addition to half the amount of usual breadcrumbs.

I do this regularly now and the husband and kiddies love the results.

And with that, I note how I have completely transititioned from being an oversexed stripper to an oversexed hausfrau.

the earth is flat

robert de niro

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I am no fan of the current Oval Office occupant. With that said, I firmly believe that any time a public figure speaks out against an elected official, he or she should do so articulately, dispassionately, and without ad hominem vitriol.

David Frum, I think, provides an excellent example of the proper tone. He is a former member of the George W. Bush administration and has spoken out and written succinctly and sagaciously about the present-day White House resident.

Frum's most recent book, for instance, provides a lucid indictment of the current administration and its chief without resorting to gutter language, personal attacks, or deflecting gibberish.

On the other hand, you have Robert De Niro's comments at the Tony Awards on Sunday night. That kind of behavior only provides ammunition to "the other side."

Although I don't agree with every point, this opinion item reaches something of the same conclusion that I did. The tirade may have made for good theatrics and ratings gold, and certainly used language the target indeed uses himself, the incident was a net loss, not a net gain.

If you can't say it well, they don't say it at all.

chick magnet cars are a myth

According to a new study, women perceive men who display their wealth as unsuitable partners for long-term relationships. Researchers specifically tested female attitudes towards a man with a flashy car versus one without one.

So a car men might think of as a "chick magnet" could work the opposite way on women they seek to attract.

My attitudes are only anecdotal, of course, but when I was single, I was largely indifferent to a man's wheels. As far as conspicuous consumption, that was a turnoff for me.

I remember dating a man in New York who, as he was walking me home, he spontaneously bought every rose a street vendor was selling, which wasn't cheap because he had a lot of roses to peddle. He obviously thought it was romantic but I found it ridiculous.

As far as flashy cars, I don't ever recall hearing a female friend mention what kind of car a man had, unless it was a complete piece of trash. Then they worried it would be unsafe.

the mummy among us

Sydney is a big enough place for plenty of strange things to happen here. A hot story recently in the news was the mummified corpse wrapped up in a rug that was found in the trash-filled home of a very odd hoarder who died last year.

Authorities have spent the last year cleaning out the house and only found the body this week. Experts believe the corpse had been hidden in the house for as long as a decade and that the victim died from severe physical injuries.

So it sounds like the hoarder may have killed the man and then kept his body at home for some ten years or more. If you're a hoarder, I guess it makes sense that you keep the bodies of your murder victims.

The hoarder himself also died in the house and it was quite a while before his body was found last year. The house must be far enough from any neighbors that the smell of rotting flesh never reached them, either last year when the hoarder died or a decade ago when the other corpse was left in the house.

Ordinary hoarding garners a lot of press, not surprisingly because it's such an odd behavior. That makes me wonder how old of a historical trend this might be. Did people in the eighteenth century hoard? What about earlier?

mind boggling

In an Arkansas court this week, a suspect admitted to the judge that he deliberately contracted the HIV virus so that he could deliberately infect others.

While the judge questioned him about his intent, which he freely admitted, no one apparently asked him why he would do such a thing.

The notorious Typhoid Mary was an asymptomatic carrier, meaning she couldn't get sick from the typhoid bacterium but that she could infect others. She deliberately hid from the authorities so she wouldn't be quarantined and thus knowingly made other people sick, but she certainly didn't deliberately infect herself so that should could make others sick.

Some humans are really fucked up. No other species would do anything remotely resembling this.

the spartan dilemma

I've been reading offline about ancient Sparta circa 500 BC. If you gave birth to a male child, you would soon be visited by a "council of inspectors" who would judge the infant's physical condition to determine if he should live or die.

If the new baby got a thumbs down, you were ordered to take the newborn to the base of a mountain and leave him. If he died, then that was it. If he lived, then he was deemed fit.

Boys at the age of seven were taken from parents and sent to a severe Spartan academy, called the "agoge," where they spent the next fourteen years enduring severe training to be warriors. The boys were not allowed to visit parents at any time and vice-versa. The only chance of seeing a parent was happenstance after the boy was grown.

Parents had no choice in this process. You had to abandon your child if ordered and also had to surrender him at age seven. The interest of the state was considered paramount to parental interests.

The only exception to this system was -- no surprise -- for male children of royal families. They were neither culled or required to submit to agoge training.

Unfortunately, what I was reading made no mention of whether parents ever rebelled against this and, if so, how many. That would certainly be my reaction. I'd head for the hills with my husband and children and make my way into Greece or Macedonia or wherever.

non-famous person

The entertainment media is beside itself with the news that superstar Jennifer Lawrence is dating a man, identified by some outlets, as a "non-famous person."

The subtext, of course, is why would a fabulous celebrity date an ordinary guy?

If she likes him and he likes her, that's all that matters. Good for them. Some of the best long-term couples in the entertainment business have involved a celebrity and a "non-famous person."

Meryl Streep, for instance, has been happily married for more than forty years to a "non-famous person." Maybe that's why they've stayed together for so long, because they're not competing professionally. She's an actor, and he's an artist.

I also found it interesting, in candid street shots of Lawrence with her "non-famous person," at how ordinary she looks without makeup and her hair looking like she fixed it with a twig (enlargement). Maybe that's part of her celebrity disguise -- people would think she looks a bit like Lawrence, but because she's plain and dressed in ordinary clothes, no one would think she was really her.

untimely death

The internationally acclaimed and hugely successful fashion designer Kate Spade, most famous for her handbag lines, committed suicide yesterday. She left a note to her family, but few details were released and nothing about why.

I'm guessing depression was the cause. None of the media reports say that, but some tweets from celebrities and designers who knew her reference depression as the answer.

Suicide is so incredibly sad and no less so when depression is the cause. Depression is a mood disorder with physiological causes and not just "all in your head." Right now, prescription medication can help some sufferers but not others.

Depression and success often go hand in hand. Some famously successful people like Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln suffered from severe depression.

Hopefully someday soon a successful pharmaceutical solution will go a long way toward curbing depression. It has claimed many victims, and their loss is always a waste.

the murderess

Two weeks ago I wrote an entry about American novelist Peter Swanson's first book which I thoroughly enjoyed. Last night I finished his second thriller and am happy to report it's even better than his first.

This one, titled The Kind Worth Killing, involves several possible murderers who are all on a collusion course with each other. Only one of them, a woman, will succeed and survive.

What I particularly enjoyed about this book was a shocking twist that came at the middle, rather than almost at the end, which seems to happen with most novels. It comes totally out of the blue, but on closer examination, you realize the novelist cleverly but discretely set it up all along.

Swanson is fairly young for a novelist with four successful books under his belt already. That means he still could have decades more of new books to flow from his computer, something I'm very much looking forward to.

petro's jacket

The President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, is pictured below with Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko. The latter has been in the news for very interesting reasons, but that is not the focus of my entry today.

Poroshenko is a billionaire, having made a fortune in the confectionary industry. But if you look at the enlargement of the photo below, you'll his suit is incredibly badly made. In the highlighted portion of the picture, you can see how poorly the arm and shoulder are fitted together and the bunching and puckering that resulted.

While cheaply made off-the-rack suits are made of inferior fabrics and not always correctly cut, they're nowhere nearly this badly sewn. This looks like it was tailored by a small child.

I'm left wondering: did Poroshenko make his own suit?

it's about time

The first time we tried to get pregnant, it took about two years. The second time we tried to get pregnant, it took about two years again.

Now, the third time, it's been about two years since we started trying again. We've been trying a lot lately.

So I'm ready for it to happen. But I also have to recognize what happened before is not very predictive of what will happen again. It could take longer. Like a lot longer. Like a few more years.

The trying part is certainly enjoyable. At the same time, I don't want to have to wait too long. We plan to have one last child and we don't want the boys to be too old when that happens.

But I'm ready, oh Venus, goddess of love and success. Make it happen soon, please.

Roman women reportedly had their hair cut short as a sacrifice to Venus when they wanted to conceive. I'm not quite ready to go there yet. I don't like having short hair nor does my husband like it on women.

But I'm actually thinking about having it cut short in a few months. Just in case. Because hair does grow back.

bottle brush kink

I happened to see a homemade BDSM porn gif on my Tumblr feed, which I cannot now find again, where a guy stuck a bottle brush into a woman's pussy. The brush head was about the length and thickness of a man's erect penis.

So he hand fucks her in and out for a while with the bottle bursh and then, with the thing still completely inside her, he also sticks in his hard cock and starts fucking her like crazy, so she's double-penetrated both with him and the brush.

Now I have to think that is really uncomfortable for her and possibly dangerous and the same for him.

I have several bottle brushes of various degrees of stiffness and I wouldn't want to stick any of them into my lady parts, and I know my husband wouldn't want to double-penetrate me with one while also using the most important organ on his body.

I'm left wondering if the couple did this just because it was off the wall and attention-getting, not because either one of them got any pleasure from it. Unless she's a masochist and he's a sadist with a healthy helping of masochism.

burqa ban

Denmark passed a law yesterday banning face-covering garments, including burqas and niqab (the latter cover as much as a burqa but are constructed differently). The Danes join Austria, Belgium, and France, which already have similar prohibitions.

I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, I hate any kind of patriarchially required attire like the burqa, a headsarf, wig, dress, etc.

Yet on the other hand, this curtails religious liberty and evokes the slippery slope argument. If you ban face covering, which is effectively based entirely in religion, is that any different than banning a skullcap for a man?

I think a lot of religion is fucked up and a lot of wrongs in the world are wrapped up in religious mumbo-jumbo. But at the same time, worship is about freedom, so if you want to worship a god or a godess or a paper plate tacked to the wall, you should have the freedom to do so.

The linked article does not say, but perhaps the Danish lawmakers advocating this ban by arguing that facial covering in public could pose a security risk. But if you were bent on committing a horrible act, like detonating a suicide bomb, whether or not your face could be recognized is really irrelevant.

I'm no lawyer let alone a constitutional law expert, but I suspect a ban like this would not pass judicial muster in the United States. I think the reason would be because a ban would be an actual threat to religious liberty while "public safety" would be considered a hypothetical threat.