Day 10 - NEW FEAR'S EVE

[pandatrash]

THREE! TWO! ONE! HAPPPPPY NEW FEAR!

This is the last raccoon holiday for a while, so if you'd like a vacation from this murder game before the KILLING NIGHT, check your tablets! We'll even let you leave the campus, so you'd better praise our generosity!

[There's a new app on the tablets that cannot be removed. It will only activate when you are alone in your room, but click the cute carrot icon and you'll be given a simple prompt: "TAKE A VACATION?" with yes/no prompts. If you click "no," nothing happens; the app simply closes, ready for you to click on it again. But if you choose "yes," you'll become a bit lightheaded, and the next thing you know, you'll be back home. But not just any home: The home in which your murder carrot(s) (the best one, the newest one, or maybe even both of them? It's up to player discretion) has already been made reality. You'll be there for a full three hours before you're brought back to Nope's Peak, holding the tablet as if you never left. After that, the app will only say, "You know what to do."]

By the way, if it ain't obvious, that killing night is tonight! If you're thinking about doing a murder, rest assured: We will NOT let the dead mess up a trial like that again!

[In other news, the science lab has been restocked, and the raccoons made a HUGE mess eating out of the kitchen trash, like worse than usual.]

((Game nav
Day 10 Recyclr
Vacation time!
Trust sheets - get those submitted by tomorrow evening!))

Comments

[very_good_end]

You may be surprised. It arises from the British Empire and colonialism. An Englishman named Sir William Herschel was acting as a magistrate in the Bengali region of India. He noted that many contracts signed by native Indians were broken, and reasoned that the natives were not taking a signed contract 'seriously,' as a binding agreement. So, on a whim, he devised a method of impressing further relevance beyond a simple signature. In July, 1858, he entered a contract with a local businessman named Rajyadhar Konai to provide construction materials for roads used by the government. At signing, he also had him dip his hand in ink, and press it to the paper he signed, creating a perfect hand-print. Sir Herschel surely didn't realize what he was doing... he only wished to create a little ceremony to incite superstition. Giving the native peoples a more 'personal contact' feel to the document, he reasoned it would frighten them and make it less likely they would possibly break them. It worked, so he started making it a requirement in all of his dealings.

...It was over time he realized that more than simply being a scare tactic, the markings had practical value that could indeed be reliably retraced to each individual... and that this was both permanent and consistent an identification. Furthermore, the process could be refined to simply keeping track of the tips of the fingers, without the need of an entire hand-print. The references could therefore easily be stored and referred to later.

[shrugs, taking the moment to breathe]

There are certainly other examples of it in history, but the first practical use of fingerprints as identification came from the records of Sir Herschel's dealings over the decades he spent collecting them.

An interesting notion, isn't it? That a 'superstition' lead to something practical, completely by accident.