http://www.theonion.com/content/news/mod…

Modern-Day Martin Luther Nails 95 Comment Cards To IHOP Door

SIOUX FALLS, SD—Managers of an area International House of Pancakes discovered 95 comment cards nailed to its front door Sunday, which were later identified as the work of local resident Ronald Lyman, a 53-year-old contractor and onetime regular customer who is calling for wide-scale reform of the venerable chain.

The self-styled pancake reformer decries IHOP indulgences such as whipped toppings.

“IHOP has grown weak on powdered sugar and fruity garnishes, forsaking the righteousness of its original rib-sticking mission,” said Lyman…

Lyman said that his pancake fundamentalism is based on “the trinity of griddle-fried batter, butter, and maple syrup, as directed by our breakfast elders more than two score years ago.”…

Lyman suggested that, should his recommended changes not be instituted, he will have no choice but to break with the restaurant and start his own International House of Pancakes, Reformed (IHOPR) off I-229 by the airport.

Ha!

(subject line hattip)

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

She had a handicapped placard in the car and was heading toward a handicap parking spot, according to police.

A neighbor, Donna Morris, said Sorensen told her she was driving slowly into the handicap spot, when she suddenly found herself inside the store.

It’s a good thing that we’ve got a vast, well-paid government bureaucracy in place to stop this sort of thing from ever happening!
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=12082 http://tjic.com/?p=12081 http://tjic.com/?p=12081#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:54:27 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=12081 CNC machining parts for absolutely beautiful high end planes:

http://www.holteyplanes.com/blog/?p=147

Go read the whole post, and click “back” to see other steps in the manufacture.

How much do these hyper-rare hyper-awesome handplanes cost? You don’t want to know.

I’ll keep using my blue Record handplanes for now. Maybe someday if I come into sudden wealth, I might upgrade to Lie Nielsen.

Or, if Bill Gates croaks and leaves me a few mill to play with, I might even pick up a few Bridge City beauties.

…but I think that Holtey planes should forever remain locked away in a tabernacle (or tool chest) far away from my unskilled hands.

http://volokh.com/posts/1246401854.shtml

Pipe Bombs Unprotected by the Second Amendment

So holds the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in United States v. Tagg: “Unlike the handguns in Heller, pipe bombs are not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” (There’s more, so if you’re interested, check out pp. 10-14 of the opinion.)

That’s circular reasoning - if it’s illegal to have pipe bombs at all, then by definition no one will legally own pipe bombs or own them for legal purposes. Therefore, there is no need to legalize pipe bombs.

The whole post is worth reading; go check it out.

Sometimes when I’m contemplating the meaning of life, and one’s relative success or failure in achieving one’s goals, I think to the ending, where Owen Meany’s life is revealed to be one long prelude to one important moment.

I suspect that from time to time we all think we know what the purposes of our individual lives are, but aPfOM suggests that many times we might not really know the plot arc until the final chapter is written.

A month or two back I saw something positive and quite important that, in some small degree, at a second remove, may have been related to my actions and decisions years earlier. It would be arrogant to assume or claim responsibility for good things at any remove, but if one is merely looking at tea leaves or the flights of birds, perhaps that’s enough to let one draw reassurances about meaning, and about life.

Anyway, back to the typical kind of crap you find in this blog:

Things I did not know about aPfOM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Prayer_Fo…

Californian punk rock band Lagwagon based the song “Owen Meaney” from their 1998 album Let’s Talk About Feelings on the book.

The band Jimmy Eat World also based the song “Goodbye Sky Harbor” from their 1999 album Clarity on the book.

Danish band Nephew mention Owen Meany in the song “Swimming Time” from their debut album Swimming Time - (”stacking all the books, sampling Owen Meany”).

In the movie Milk Money, the elementary school is christened Owen Meany Elementary.

On the agenda today:

• assemble the most recent pepper mill
• lunch with friends and the godkids
• head out to knifemaking class at the forge (see also Knifemaking University )
• Guy’s Night ( which, it turns out, was another thing that the Scottish nobility didn’t actually get to do back in the day, but, on the other hand, Scotch Whiskey is sometimes involved, so in a karmic sense, maybe it’s a wash)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/opinio…

FROM the perspective of 2009, democracy in the United States is a great success.

I beg to differ.

This makes it is easy to imagine that the march to democracy was the only path — that there is a clear line from the Declaration of Independence to the presidency of Barack Obama, and that democracy is the only fair society.

The word “fair” has no definition beyond a context-dependent “whatever the speaker wants it to mean”.

http://www.answers.com/fair

* Being in accordance with relative merit or significance: She wanted to receive her fair share of the proceeds.

* Consistent with rules, logic, or ethics: a fair tactic.

Depending on the speaker, this could mean anything from “all wealth divided exactly evenly according to a communist’s wet dream” to “entirely unregulated anarchocapitalism, with some people being trillionaires, and others dying of exposure in the gutter”.

Anyway, using my definition of fair (”all wealth ending up whereever it ends up without coercion or force”), I assert that democracy, by definition can not be fair, because it involves using force to redistribute (i.e. steal) wealth.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=12078 http://tjic.com/?p=12077 http://tjic.com/?p=12077#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:58:43 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=12077 I could have come up with this logo for just $4k !

http://jwz.livejournal.com/1058572.html

Rohde and Muller looked for a periodic signal in the history of biodiversity … the strong peak in their power spectrum indicating a 62-million-year cycle was a surprise. We found evidence of the same cycle in three more data sets…

It takes about 200 million years for the Sun to complete one orbit around the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Moreover, the galaxy is a thin disk, and there is also a motion along a vertical direction. As our solar system slowly orbits the Milky Way’s center, it oscillates through the galactic plane with a period of around 65 million years. When we move up in the disk, we are pulled back down by gravity, coasting past the midpoint, then rising back up again, akin to a weight bobbing up and down on a spring.

Was this the missing mechanism?…

It turns out that the biodiversity minima of the 62-million-year cycle happens when the Sun is “bobbed up” on only one side of the galaxy…

cosmic rays … [ are ] showering the north side of the galaxy’s disk. We are protected by the galactic magnetic field, much as the Earth’s magnetic field protects our planet. When we rise to the north side, we are less protected — and the ensuing flux of cosmic rays contains particles of such energy that they can reach the Earth’s surface…

Huh.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/…

The District’s open, all-are-invited taxicab industry is so saturated with drivers that the entire enterprise is threatened, according to a D.C. Council member who has filed a bill to cap the number of cabs allowed on city streets.

Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham introduced legislation Tuesday to limit the number of taxicabs in D.C. through either a medallion system, like ones used in New York City and Chicago, or a certification system.

The soaring number of taxicab operators in D.C. — roughly 8,000, most of whom own their own cars — is a “pressing and urgent problem,” Graham said. There are more licensed drivers in D.C. per capita than any place in the world, he said, and new applicants continue to take the required class, giving them access to the driver exam administered by the D.C. Taxicab Commission. A glut of drivers could jeopardize the chances of any cabbies making an adequate living, Graham has said.

This is the same problem we have in so many other areas of life: so many business folks stay in business despite not making a living, that then they all starve to death.

You know, coffee houses, bookstores, flower shops…all of those people are wasting away.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

“When an officer is involved in a violent incident, he’s going to use his best recollection when writing up the statement of charges,”

If you or I do it, it’s “assault” and “filing a false report”.

If a cop does it, well, “the department stands behind him”.

http://ffffound.com/image/3b942047d3ce50…

http://bloodletting.blog-city.com/hondur…

Honduran thought experiment…

Let’s say, just for the sake of argument that the following events had transpired;

April 2003: Following the spectacular celebration in Al Firdos square, and the electrifying images that accompanied it, Rush Limbaugh takes to the airwaves and circulates the idea that George Bush should be eligible to be president for unlimited terms. At this point in time, GWBs approval rating is close to 70%.

May 2003: Having sparked a huge debate in America regarding the wisdom of keeping Presidents for more terms due to the long nature of insurgency warfare, senior members of the GOP suggest that a non-binding referendum should be held on changing the constitution to allow George Bush to be President for multiple terms. The results will be tabulated only amongst state legislators as ‘a representative sample.’ The US Congress issues a law making it illegal for non-binding ballots to be printed for such a referendum, fearing that it could be used, should the results favor the President, to retrospectively declare a constitutional ammendment.

Early June 2003: Right wing factions from Europe and Israel ship ballots for this referendum to the United States. Upon hearing of this, the Governor of Virginia, where the boat containing the ballots is docked, activates the Virginia National Guard and seizes the ship and its cargo.

Late June 2003: Right wing groups begin mass demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience, stating that the freedom of speach is being threatened and that they are being disenfranchised. George Bush starts taking to the airwaves along with Hannity and Rush proclaiming that Freedom is at stake, and making thinly veiled threats that there will be civil unrest and blood in the streets if the vote is not permitted.

July Fourth, 2003: In an emergency session in congress, President George Bush is impeached and removed from office. Dick Cheney then issues orders to the FBI, in conjunction with the US Special Operations command, to arrest George Bush and fly him out of the country.

The Prime Minister of Israel, along with Right wing factions in Europe demand that George Bush be reappointed as the President of the United States.

Now, imagine that instead of this happening in the US, it is happening in Honduras, and instead of it being a head of state from the right wing, imagine the head of state is from the left wing. Well, you don’t really have to imagine it, because that is what is happening.

Well said.

Is Obama ignorant of what’s going on in Honduras, or is he actively in favor of a left wing government overturning the local constitution and seizing power?

I’ll be charitable and assume the former.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_ham…

CONCORD, N.H. - A federal sharpshooter had tax evader Ed Brown’s head in his crosshairs and was ready to pull the trigger during a failed attempt to arrest Brown at his rural New Hampshire home two years ago, the agent told a federal jury yesterday.

You are sheep, and you are here so that government employees may sheer you.

If you refuse to be sheered, you might as well be killed.

In other news, man, those government emploee pensions are sweet!
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=12069 http://tjic.com/?p=12068 http://tjic.com/?p=12068#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:31:55 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=12068

http://www.retrocomedy.com/2009/07/15-cr…

She totally deserves it. Seriously, what kind of woman doesn’t “store test” for fresher coffee?

Creepy old ad, or strange new kink? You decide!

“OK, this time, you be the insufferable customer with too many questions about the espresso, and I’ll be the angry-sexy barrista!”
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=12068 http://tjic.com/?p=12067 http://tjic.com/?p=12067#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:34:15 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=12067

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/radleybal…

You know…

…if Walmart had given, say, the Cato Institute somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million, after which Cato issued a joint letter with Walmart executives calling for the federal government to pass new policies that would hurt Walmart’s competitors, I’m pretty sure people like Matthew Yglesias would be calling Cato a bunch of corporate whores.

But this isn’t the Cato Institute we’re talking about. It’s Yglesias’ employer, the left-wing Center for the American Progress.

So you see, that means it’s all okay.

Firm uses government power to harm rivals, seek rents.

Film at 11.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

The city went on high alert last Saturday. More than a dozen police officers fanned out around Fenway Park to direct traffic and shoo away photographers who got too close. Twenty-four meters were bagged so no one would park. Another 75 spaces along four streets, including popular Yawkey Way, were closed to the public.

An unscheduled makeup game? A poorly advertised concert?

No, it was a wedding reception, specifically Red Sox principal owner John Henry’s wedding reception, and city officials took unusual measures to give him space and privacy.

By closing off all the typically congested roads around Fenway to unvetted parkers, the city essentially allowed guests of Henry and new bride Linda Pizzuti to park at the door of the reception and valets to zip down cleared streets.

“Does this mean when I have my Christmas party in the winter, I can call the city and ask them to block off parking on my street?’’ asked Bill Richardson, president of the Fenway Civic Association. The answer from city officials: Not exactly.

I’ve got no problem with private resources being used in this way; I object to public resources being used in this way.

There are two possible stabs at solutions:

* pass some attempt at “good government” legislation that will never be followed

* privatize the public resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

In economics, a public good is a good that is non-rivaled and non-excludable. This means, respectively, that consumption of the good by one individual does not reduce availability of the good for consumption by others; and that no one can be effectively excluded from using the good.

As the greens keep telling us, the more folks use roads, the more they impact others.

As the Fast Pass transponder people keep telling us, the technology exists to bill people for their use of roads, with almost zero cost.

Therefore: roads are neither non-rivaled and non-excludable.

That is to say: roads are not public goods.

Privatize the roads!
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=12066 http://tjic.com/?p=12065 http://tjic.com/?p=12065#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:25:28 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=12065 Jimmy Wales broke numerous Wikipedia rules while acting to suppress information of kidnapping of David Rohde, and this has resulted in people writing Wikipedia articles on the censorship.

And, of course, every time someone makes a reference to the fact that the editors broke the sockpuppet / meat puppet rule or the three revert rule , the editors respond by reverting as many times as necessary to cover their asses, and/or use meat puppets to suppress the information.

E.g:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?titl…

old text:

(See also

• Wikipedia’s policy against sock puppets: “Wikipedians prize their use of consensus to determine issues … Sock puppets are used to counter these prized features by creating the illusion of greater support for a viewpoint and evading sanctions. All such sock puppet uses are forbidden”.
• meat puppet
• Wikipedia’s “bright line” three revert rule

)

new text:

In response to criticism over the actions taken, Wales stated that no rules of Wikipedia were broken or bent and that relevant processes were followed. … Wales responded that Wikipedia’s editorial processes were followed 100 percent and this was handled in a fairly routine way. “No Wikipedia rules were bent or broken in any way,” he added.

In short:

The old version linked to a bunch of Wikipedia rules that interested parties could read and then make up their own minds.

The new version removes the links to the rules, and replaces them with a statement by the alleged rule breaker claiming that no rules were broken.

Wow. That seems like a fair and balanced way to do it.

Wikipedia is a great resource, but the Wikipedia editors are a nasty hot-house little clique filled with back scratching, secret mailing lists, two sets of rules (one for insiders, one for the little people, etc.). They remind me of why I’ve stayed away from SF fandom and lots of other geek activities. Well, for my sanity, I’ll back away and treat the corrupt little Wikipedia editors the same way I treat most other toxicly self-satisfied minor geek luminaries.

Indy filmmaker is raising a quarter mill to make a film, will give all donations back if the target isn’t reached.

By the way, who was that insightful anarchocapitalist who created this Wikipedia page on assurance contracts back in 2005 ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/us/02n…

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition…

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

“reinterpreted their calling for the modern world” often means “embraced syncretism, hard-line leftism, and/or lesbianism in their ranks”.

No, that’s not just my fevered imagination (my imagination spends very little think thinking about nuns), but a report from an ex-nun that I know, corroborated by dozens of reports I’ve read.

…many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations…

Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.

Oh noz! Brides of Christ are expected to work with in the Church, instead of receiving paychecks to “work in academia and do political advocacy and grass roots organizing” !?!?!

How regressive and Medieval the Church is being!

Given this backdrop, Sister Schneiders, the professor in Berkeley, urged her fellow sisters not to cooperate with the visitation, saying the investigators should be treated as “uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house.”

A delegation sent from the Vatican to inspect Church organs is “an uninvited guest”.

That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the nun from Berkeley.

Each congregation of nuns will be evaluated based on how well they are “living in fidelity” both to their congregation’s own internal norms and constitution, and to the church’s guidelines for religious life, Mother Clare said. For instance, if a congregation’s stated mission is to serve youth, are the nuns doing that? If they do not live in a convent, are they attending Mass and keeping the sacraments?

Wow. That seems just so insane!

Sister Janice Farnham, a part-time professor of church history at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, said, “Why are the U.S. sisters being singled out, when women religious in other countries are struggling with many issues about the quality of their lives, in the Church and in their societies?”

Mmmm….because there haven’t been hundreds of reports of syncretism, heresy, sexual amorality, environmentalism, and communism among the nuns of Iceland?

Cardinal Levada sent a letter to the Leadership Conference saying an investigation was warranted because it appeared that the organization had done little since it was warned eight years ago that it had failed to “promote” the church’s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.

The letter goes on to say that, “Given both the tenor and the doctrinal content of various addresses” at assemblies the Leadership Conference has held in recent years, the problem has not been fixed.

“Failure to promote” basically means “acting entirely heretically”.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=12063 http://tjic.com/?p=12062 http://tjic.com/?p=12062#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:52:04 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=12062 …to knock down the two government run HUD slums at Alewife, pushing the first into the second like dominos, isn’t as implausible as I’ve always assumed.

http://www.archdaily.com/27245/building-…

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/arch…

Felix Salmon notes who California feels is important enough to pay in cash. Legislators yes, blind and disabled people, no. Natch.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/…

A new study, Tax Burden and Individual Rights in the OECD: An International Comparison, ranks the U.S. 12th among 30 OECD countries in its “tax oppression index”:

The tax oppression index is based on 18 representative criteria measuring fiscal attractiveness, public governance and financial privacy…

1. Italy
2. Turkey*
3. Poland*
4. Mexico*
5. Germany*
6. Netherla*nds
7. Belgium*
8. Hungary*
9. France*
10. Greece*
11. United *Kingdon
12. United States*

Turkey is 10 places higher than us.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=12060 http://tjic.com/?p=12059 http://tjic.com/?p=12059#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:16:05 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=12059

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/…

As we near the end of June, which is supposed to be one of the four biggest months for federal tax collections (January, April, and September are the others), it is clear that the serious receipts shortfalls are not only continuing, but have caused the March 20 projections of the administration and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) outdated.

Some stats, June 2009 vs June 2008:

• Employment tax revenue: -9.8%
• Corporate income tax revenue: -35%
• Total dollars collected: -25.0%

This seems relatively dire, and when people start looking at these numbers, I think we’re going to have another round of contraction of consumer confidence and consumer spending.

I’d like to call the current period a dead cat bounce, but I’m not sure that I’m seeing enough positive data to suggest the corpse even rebounded off the cement…

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q…

From a reader:

Jonah:

I have written you several times over the years. We are “friends” on Facebook and I loved Liberal Fascism.

I was born in Honduras and my maternal relatives (aunts, uncles, cousins) all live there.

The country is bewildered that the world, especially the United States, is not on their side. Zelaya was confident of his plans to convert Honduras into a Venezuelan satellite. The Honduran people are proud of their constitution and are proud to have a functioning democratic system. Zelaya was replaced by a member of his own party who vows to see that this November’s presidential election takes place. What happened was not a “coup” but a bipartisan effort to save the nation.

It is heartbreaking for me to see President Obama throw Honduras under the bus. He did not speak out when Zelaya was attempting to stage a sham “constitutional referendum” with ballots printed in Venezuela.

My mother immigrated from Honduras and is a registered Republican because she remembers how the GOP stood up to communists when her countrymen were afraid of Fidel Castro. Now, Hugo Chavez is threatening to invade her beloved homeland and an American president is not standing up for a free and democratic Honduras.

Bewildered NR devotee,

Maybe the difference is that JFK was against Latin American communists, while Obama … well, where does Obama stand on Latin American communists?

http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScroll.as…

Luxury ocean liners in Russia are offering pirate hunting cruises aboard armed private yachts off the Somali coast.

Wealthy sportsmen pay upwards of $5,000 per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders.

The story as it’s written suggests the clients are already engaging Somali pirates with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers.

An AK-47 assault rifle goes for $8.50 a day, 100 rounds of ammo is $11.50, are they are also protected by a squad of ex-special forces troops.

The yachts travel from Djibouti in Somalia to Mombasa in Kenya, cruising deliberately close to the coast at a speed of just five nautical miles in an attempt to attract the interest of pirates.

Hard to imagine who is worse; the pirates, who are just trying to earn a decent living through the time-honored trade of kidnapping, or these so-called sportsmen who are essentially fronting up cash to hunt humans…

Normally I’m not in favor of staged hunts, but as your Samoan travel advisor, I proclaim this to be entirely awesome.

Wyatt (5): I have rights AND lefts!

http://volokh.com/posts/1246369069.shtml

In 1818, when informed of the death of Abigail Adams, Jefferson sent his condolences to her husband — with whom he had just a few years before resumed correspondence after nearly fifteen years (fifteen years that had been filled with rancor and bile on both sides). It’s a hard genre, the letter of condolence, and Jefferson writes the most beautiful one I’ve ever read:

“The public papers, my dear friend, announce the fatal event of which your letter of Oct. 20 had given me ominous foreboding. Tried myself, in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel what you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. The same trials have taught me that, for ills so immeasurable, time and silence are the only medicines. I will not therefore, by useless condolences, open afresh the sluices of your grief nor, although mingling sincerely my tears with yours, will I say a word more, where words are vain, but that it is of some comfort to us both that the term is not very distant at which we are to deposit, in the same cerement, our sorrows and suffering bodies, and to ascend in essence to an ecstatic meeting with the friends we have loved and lost and whom we shall still love and never lose again. God bless you and support you under your heavy affliction.”

Wow.

http://volokh.com/posts/1246370258.shtml

Justice Thomas, in particular, remained willing to front new theories on critical questions, often writing only for himself, as in NAMED. No other member of the Court is so independent in his thinking. The irony of course is that there remains a public perception, rooted in ignorance, that he is the handmaiden of other conservative Justices, particularly Justice Scalia. I disagree profoundly with Justice Thomas’s views on many questions, but if you believe that Supreme Court decisionmaking should be a contest of ideas rather than power, so that the measure of a Justice’s greatness is his contribution of new and thoughtful perspectives that enlarge the debate, then Justice Thomas is now our greatest Justice.

Well said.

Funny, but I don’t recall the NYT working to suppress information on other people who have been taken captive. In fact, the NYT actively prints information about other captives.

It’s almost as if they consider journalists’ lives to be worth more than, say, those of contractors, troops, and civilians!

Further, the NYT worked to censor Wikipedia … with the help of Jimbo Wales:

http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2009…

Three days after the kidnapping, an anonymous user added the development to the page on Rohde, citing an Afghan news agency. A Times staffer spotted it and edited that information out. The original user returned and put it back in. The Times turned to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who decided that Rohde’s safety outweighed any reluctance to tamper. “We were really helped by the fact that it hadn’t appeared in a place we would regard as a reliable source,” said Wales. “I would have had a really hard time with it if it had.”

Thus began a seven-month game of cat and mouse, with users, especially one increasingly angry one from Florida, posting the news and Wikipedia representatives removing the references and several times putting an editing freeze on the page. “We didn’t want it to look unusual in some fashion that would draw speculation, so we would protect it for three days, or up to a month, which is pretty normal,” Wales said. Because Wikipedia can be edited anonymously, the site couldn’t contact those it was trying to gag to explain what it was doing. “We had no idea who it was,” said Wales. “There was no way to reach out quietly and say ‘Dude, stop and think about this.’” Once Rohde was free, the page was unlocked, and it has now been edited to reflect the controversy over how the news of the incident was managed…

So it seems that the Wikipedia insiders have not only conspired to suppress true, well source, information, but they’ve also broken The Three Revert Rule

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revert_wars…

The “Three revert rule” (”3RR”) is a bright line rule concerning blatant overuse of reverting, a common kind of edit war behavior. It states that a user who makes more than three revert actions (of any material) on any one page within a 24 hour period, may be considered to be edit warring, and blocked appropriately, usually for a 24 hour period for a first incident. The aim of 3RR is to draw a line where edit warring via reverts is clearly beyond a reasonable level and action will be taken if it has not already been. As such it does not apply in a few narrowly defined situations where there is no edit war (listed below).

and the sock puppet rule.

Well done, NYT and Jimbo: yet more evidence that you’re both full of crap.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=12053 http://tjic.com/?p=12052 http://tjic.com/?p=12052#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:47:03 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=12052

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magaz…

I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Ha!
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=12052 http://tjic.com/?p=12051 http://tjic.com/?p=12051#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:37:40 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=12051

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/radleybal…

Length of original U.S. Constitution: 11 pages. Length of most recent energy/cap-and-trade/global warming bill: 1,200 pages.

Yeah, but where’s the “length of rope” statistic?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/radleybal…

More welcome skepticism of junk science in the court room.

Two federal lawsuits are casting a harsh spotlight on an investigative tool long beloved by American law enforcement: a bloodhound’s nose.

Lawsuits filed in Victoria, Texas, allege that Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Deputy Keith Pikett and his team of hounds — James Bond, Quincy and Clue — failed controversial sniff tests known as “scent lineups.”

Much like in traditional lineups, the dogs link human scents left at crime scenes to samples from suspects.

In each case, the suits allege, Pikett’s dogs called attention to the wrong person. Both former suspects have been cleared.

This part is fun:

Ken Sparks, county attorney in Colorado County, Texas, an enthusiastic supporter of Pikett’s work, says he understands some of the skepticism.

“Everybody who encounters it the first time says, ‘Yeah, right,’” Sparks says. “That’s what I said before I first saw it work.”

Pikett says the lawsuits are just attempts to win large awards. “It’s all about money,” he says.

One of the men wrongly identified by the police dog was jailed for three months before being exonerated by DNA testing. The greedy bastard actually thinks he should compensated for that.

We know that cops aren’t “all about the money” - that’s why they work for free!

But on the topic of the reliability of animals - haven’t we known for over a century that it is absolutely impossible for handlers to influence the behavior of their animals? If a dog can detect guilt, or a horse can do math, we just have to accept that!

(For the record, I’m not suggesting that a police dog can do addition - the Clever Hans effect only allows an animal to imitate cognitive abilities that its handler possesses.)

http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/06/…

I stumbled upon an amusing Reuters video about France’s decision to cut sales tax for restaurants. It shows restaurant workers expressing delight that — surprise! — lower taxes have helped their business.

The clip explains:

Value added tax (sales tax) will fall to 5.5% from 19.6%.

That’s a drastic cut, and it shows. Customers are coming more often and ordering more food. Restaurants are planning on hiring more people.

A sales tax below 6% … hey, that’s something that Massachusetts has!

Well, not for long.

It seems that I live in a state that’s more socialist than France.

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/arch…

Really moving article on black autoworkers in Detroit. This seems mostly like a hook, because the core story is the same as that of white autoworkers in Detroit. Liberals often accuse conservatives of hating union workers, and maybe some do, but I think it’s great that people who maybe weren’t cut out for college had a decent way of earning a good living, getting ahead a little. I think it’s really sad that era is over, especially for people who were encouraged to bet their whole futures on a deeply troubled industry. It’s just that I’m also aware that the reason people could have well-appointed jobs-for-life was an oligopolistic cartel which was able to cut rich side deals in order to buy labor and political peace. The culmination of this was the hideous junk of the 1970s, which is the kind of place that oligopolistic cartels tend to end up.

I take her point, and, as always, I appreciate the humanity that she brings to an often overly callous crowd of more-rigorous-than-thou libertarians.

That said, when she writes “…people who maybe weren’t cut out for college had a decent way of earning a good living…” I quibble with her use of the word “earn”.

The unionized workers did not “earn” their wage, except in a sense defined by the Tax Code - they received their wage despite not earning it.

The tales I’ve read of the lack of productive work in Detroit can curl your hair - hookers in the break rooms, drugs on the assembly line, sabotage of machines, etc., etc., etc.

The unionized workers took a living (often, yes, using explicit force, but usually just using the threat of it (like the government!)), but they haven’t earned a living in decades.

It’s long, but it’s important to read the whole thing.

http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/fdocs/docs.f…

In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit Nos. 08-1196, 08-1197 & 08-1198

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

JON BARTLETT, ANDREW R. SPENGLER, and DANIEL MASARIK, Defendants-Appellants.

The distance between civilization and barbarity, and the time needed to pass from one state to the other, is depressingly short. Police officers in Milwaukee proved this the morning of October 24, 2004.

Andrew Spengler held a housewarming party that started on October 23 and lasted into the next morning. Spengler and many guests were police officers. Liquor flowed freely. Katie Brown and Kirsten Antonissen were among the invitees. They arrived after 2:30 AM on October 24 with Frank Jude and Lovell Harris. The quartet was immediately made to feel unwelcome because the women are white, and the men are not. (Harris describes himself as black; Jude describes himself as bi-racial.) After five minutes, the four prepared to leave—but they were prevented when at least ten men stormed outside, sur- rounded Antonissen’s truck, and demanded to know what the four new arrivals had done with Spengler’s badge. Spengler says that he could not find it after the quartet arrived, and he accused them of theft. The men demanded that the four get out of the truck and surrender the badge. When they stayed inside, the men threatened them (”Nigger, we can kill you”) and began to vandalize the truck. Harris tried to wake the neighbors; the men responded: “Nigger, shut up, it’s our world.”

Eventually all four were dragged from the truck. A search did not turn up the badge. Instead of concluding that Spengler’s accusation was mistaken, the men became enraged and violent. One cut Harris’s face in a way that he described as “slow and demented.” Harris managed to free himself and run away. Multiple men began to kick and punch Jude. Antonissen managed to call 911; she told the operator “they’re beating the shit out of him.” When the men saw Antonissen use the phone, they wrested it from her hand and flung her against the truck so forcefully that its metal was dented. Brown made two calls to 911 before her phone, too, was seized.

The first call was logged at 2:48, and two officers (Joseph Schabel and Nicole Martinez) arrived at 3:00. The beating continued until their appearance. Men punched Jude’s face and torso; when he fell to the ground, they kicked his head and thighs. The partygoers behaved as a mob. Not a single person in the house tried to stop the attack or even to call for aid. Jon Clausing, who had slashed Harris’s face, explained his conduct as “just kind of going along with everybody.” That is the way of the mob. Society has police forces to pose a counterweight to mobs, yet here the police became a mob.

Schabel and Martinez were on duty and had not been drinking, so they should have put a stop to the violence. Instead Schabel joined it, while Martinez watched. On being told that Jude had stolen Spengler’s badge, Schabel called Jude a “motherfucker” and stomped on his face until others could hear bones breaking. After telling Martinez “I’m really sorry you have to see this,” Daniel Masarik picked Jude off the ground and kicked him in the crotch so hard that his body left the ground. Jon Bartlett then took one of Schabel’s pens and pressed it into each of Jude’s ear canals, causing severe injury and excruciating pain. The men also broke two of Jude’s fingers by bending them back until they snapped. Spengler put a gun to Jude’s head and said: “I’m the fucking police. I can do whatever I want to do. I could kill you.” Bartlett used a knife to cut off Jude’s jacket and pants, leaving him naked on the street in a pool of his own blood.

The violence tapered off when additional on-duty police arrived. At 3:09 officers arrested Jude. Yes, they arrested the victim, although Jude had never fought back. (He had suffered a concussion and was unable to defend himself.) Jude was taken to an emergency room; the admitting physician took photographs because “[t]here were too many [injuries] to document” in writing. The injuries to Jude’s ears could not be diagnosed because the physicians could not control the bleeding. One physician testified that she had never seen ear injuries so severe. While Jude was receiving treatment, on-duty officers recovered Jude’s car. Bartlett and other men had ripped up its seats with knives and poured antifreeze over them; apparently they poured antifreeze into the gas tank too, damaging the engine. The radio had been wrecked. The men broke a headlight and tore a mirror off Antonissen’s truck. Spengler’s badge was not found in either the car or the truck; perhaps he had put down the badge in the house and was too soused to remember where.

Bartlett, Spengler, and Masarik were prosecuted in state court and acquitted after Schabel and others com- mitted perjury on their behalf…

Remember, folks, we little people can’t carry weapons to defend ourselves, and we don’t need to, because we’ve got police officers, kind, fair, sensitive, slow-to-anger, wise police officers to keep us from all that is dangerous in the world.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/busine…

The British economy contracted in the first quarter by the most in more than 50 years, official figures showed Tuesday, while data from Brussels showed prices falling for the first time ever in the euro zone.

Gross domestic product fell 2.4 percent in the first quarter from the fourth quarter of 2008, the Office for National Statistics said, the most since 1958 and below the initial estimate of a 1.9 percent decline.

Green shoots, baby!

But, on the bright side, we’re going to be hit with a wave of social security redemptions and our newly massive debt in 5 or 10 years, so we should pop right out of the slow down then…

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

Governor Deval Patrick signed a budget yesterday that imposes more than $1 billion in additional taxes on Massachusetts residents

That’s how you fight a recession - increase the tax burden!

Patrick … continued to make the case yesterday that [ a 19-cent-per-gallon increase in the gasoline tax ] could [ also ] be necessary …

What a great plan! Bump the sales tax and the gas tax.

Especially since all the fat has already been cut from the Massachusetts budget!

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…

Nearly 30 Boston firefighters with pending disability claims filed for retirement yesterday, just two days before a new state law ends a controversial benefit that allows them to significantly enhance their pensions if they claim career-ending injuries occurred while filling in for a superior at a higher pay grade.

Of the 29 who filed yesterday, 25 said they were filling in for a superior at the time of their injuries

Yes, I truly believe that even though Boston firefighters spend 1% of their time substituting for their superiors, 86.2% of all the disability injuries they receive happen on those days.

Yes, I do believe that.
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