A reminder that stupidity is a human universal:
In what may be the rare news story 100% full of hot air (or at least helium, at any rate), this story shows that Swedish police are capable of some truly ham-handedly silly things that sound like they belong in backwoods Alabammy with all the gumps unhappy about stuff like this. The more serious point here is that security, past a certain point, tends to slide into self-parody and there should always be a line between genuine problems, tragedy, and as in this case farce. In this case, the farce is that a couple celebrating their 21st Birthday got in trouble with the police and requiired to take down their birthday balloons because the police read 21 wrong and thought it stood for IS, as in Islamic State.
To be really frank, I would expect the problem of literally being incapable of knowing numbers from letters from Alabama, not Sweden. This is not politically motivated targeting of minarets, as Switzerland did, or treating a Burlington Coat Factory as a sacred relic, as New York City did, but it does show the absurdity of bigotry and political correctness of the type that made that phrase ripe for mockery.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31629267
To be really frank, I would expect the problem of literally being incapable of knowing numbers from letters from Alabama, not Sweden. This is not politically motivated targeting of minarets, as Switzerland did, or treating a Burlington Coat Factory as a sacred relic, as New York City did, but it does show the absurdity of bigotry and political correctness of the type that made that phrase ripe for mockery.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31629267