Eric Cordian wrote: > > Anonymous writes: > > > Terrific article below about the "Irish Travellers", an inbred gypsy-like > > society which has decades of practice in anonymity, multiple identities, > > secret languages, fake IDs, and other cypherpunk-like practices. They > > live in trailer parks and make their living with home improvement scams > > and various frauds, just like many cypherpunks. They even reside in towns > > with names like White Settlement. I thought that was Tim May's house! > > > Read on for a glimpse of the future of cypherpunk culture... > > Things must be slow on Theory-Edge again.
Mega-slow. These people are not about to destroy Civilisation as we Know It. And have nothing whatsoever to do with cypherpunks as far as I can see. There may not be very many travellers in the USA but they are hardly the world's most unknown cultural group. There are even websites about them (some links at http://sca.lib.liv.ac.uk/collections/gypsy/travell_old.htm) Over here in Britain they are just about the last group it is socially acceptable to be racist against in public. "Travellers" is their own name for themselves, people used to call them "Tinkers" in Scotland, which was mildly derogatory, or mistake them for Gypsies (Romany) in England, which is just plain wrong. Some of them got into the news over here 2 or 3 years ago after a fight on a plane when "air rage" was all the rage. They were neighbours of mine, the campsite is only about 200 metres from my house. As far as I know they never did anyone round here any harm. One of their kids used to sit next to my daughter at school. Though these ones are Connors, Coyles, Coopers, and O'Driscolls rather than Carrolls and Gormans. They do seem to like names near the begining of the alphabet. One odd thing about the news coverage was that it included the age of the accused. One of the women who I had always assumed was in her 50s if not 60s turned out to be in her mid 30s. Not any easy life. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/844862.stm http://wwa.rte.ie/news/2000/0811/airrage.html
