As in “This is my high speed internet lego house”.

Strange times.

…strange kid.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articl…

Prostitute apologizes to wife of Spitzer

Her message to Silda Wall Spitzer: “I’m sorry for your pain.”

So, Elliot Spitzer is the one who’s really the !@#% here.

…but “I’m sorry for your pain” is an ultra-weasely non-apology.

How about

“I’m sorry that I conspired with your husband to drain $40,000 from your family’s bank accounts so that your husband could have hot monkey sex with someone young enough to be his daughter. I’m also sorry that I had unprotected anal sex with your husband, thus exposing you, Silda, to who-knows-what sorts of cooties and crawlies that he may have dragged home from a prostitute.”

On the other hand, Silda Spitzer lived a pretty nice lifestyle based on Elliot performing on profitable businesses and innocent business owners the same acts that he did to Ashley Alexandra Dupre, so my eyes aren’t tearing up for either side.

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

Three brothers who own the Prestige Car Wash on Pearl Street in Brockton thought that installing $20,000 worth of artificial turf would satisfy a city ordinance that requires green space between the street and the parking lot of a business.

But just as Nir, Yossi, and Ronen Drory were putting the finishing touches on their strip of faux grass, the city’s building inspector, Joseph Vasapollo, dropped by to say they had to rip it up and replace it with the real thing.

While the city ordinance, which is 968 pages long, doesn’t define green space, Vasapollo described it as being “planted strips with grass, flowers, deciduous trees, or even mulch.”

Last week, the Zoning Board of Appeals upheld Vasapollo’s interpretation of the ordinance.

So three guys spent $20k conforming to a 968 page specification, and then a verbal interpretation of it trumped the rules?

Between “trees”, “grass” and “mulch”, does anyone want to guess what the replacement is?

I’m betting on “mulch, and a few tires”.

Ooops…wait, I missed this:

According to Vasapollo, the plans for the car wash, which required Planning Board approval, said the strip would contain loam and seed. “Then they did something else,” he said.

OK, they’re all scumbags.

…but government still should not have the power to tell people how their property should be landscaped.

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

The steady incursion of unsightly cellphone antennas on Boston neighborhoods is triggering a backlash among fed-up residents, and city officials are scrambling to find ways to control their spread.

The city’s Zoning Board rejected a Verizon cellphone antenna for the North End this week after residents and two neighborhood associations complained that it would be ugly and mar the historic quarter. Some residents also cited unsubstantiated concerns about health effects, part of a longstanding debate over cellphone towers nationally.

I’m sure that none of the folks objecting to the antenna actually have cell phones themselves…
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10354 http://tjic.com/?p=10353 http://tjic.com/?p=10353#comments Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:41:28 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10353

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

Retired Hub firefighter arrested in drug case

A Boston firefighter on disability retirement was arrested in Texas this week with 41 pounds of marijuana, police said, news that comes at a sensitive time for a department dealing with drug use and disability scandals.

Dennis J. Hogan, a 53-year-old from South Boston

53 years old?

“Retired” ?

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

was arrested Monday morning after he was stopped for speeding on Interstate 40 in the area of Wildorado, Oldham County, in the northern part of Texas, said Linda Block, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety. She said the Texas Highway Patrol trooper noticed Hogan acting strangely, asked to search the vehicle, and was given permission.

If I ever have a trunkload of contraband, and I’m speeding, shoot me in the head, because I deserve it.

…and if I ever have a bunch of contraband and say “sure, search it”, shoot my corpse a second time.

Steve MacDonald, a spokesman for the Fire Department, said last night that fire officials were notified of Hogan’s arrest. He said Hogan, a firefighter for two decades, retired three years ago.

A mere twenty years of work, then lifetime retirement. Nice work scam, if you can get it!
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10353 http://tjic.com/?p=10352 http://tjic.com/?p=10352#comments Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:37:35 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10352 Out of Town news in Harvard Square is shutting down at the end of the year.

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Origi…

Handwritten in pen?

What, were there no crayons available ?
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10351 http://tjic.com/?p=10350 http://tjic.com/?p=10350#comments Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:31:03 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10350

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

Barack Obama’s selection of Eric Holder as his attorney general is a very discouraging sign for anyone who hoped the new administration would de-escalate the war on drugs. Meet the new boss, yada yada. As Nick Gillespie said on PJTV a while back, there was no good libertarian reason to vote for Obama - though some libertarians did.

So Obama smoked pot and snorted cocaine, and it impaired him to the point that he’s the, what, second youngest president of the US, and the first black one?

So now, with that first hand experience of just how dangerous drugs are, he’s going to send your kids, younger brothers, and neighbors to jail for doing exactly what he did?

Probably not loan it to the Big Three:

http://space4commerce.blogspot.com/2008/…

The test of any idea is ‘would I do it with my money’. Because that is what is really going on here.

I’m being asked to loan a whole bunch of money to three businesses that are over-extended, are saddled with a lot of debt and obligations their competitors don’t have, who have made some bad choices in the past and find themselves in a bit of a pickle.

They’ve got three months to work up a plan to make efficient cars and market them. Because, I guess, up to this point the boys in Marketing have been playing Hearts in the break room. God only knows what the engineers have been doing instead of their jobs, all this time.

Then they submit this plan for approval to a guy who has never worked for a for-profit company and whose business experience is nil.

And if this guy says ‘yes’ then I will loan these folks more money. How much more is not specified .. and the spokesman for the plan gets kinda shifty-eyed and starts talking about a bunch of hoo-ha when I ask how much.

Let them go bankrupt.

http://jwz.livejournal.com/967478.html

hundred minute test tone

It turns out that there is a film in which a blurry shadow on a black background hisses at a blurry shadow on a black background which clicks and purrs. Also, briefly, some rednecks get nuked. This film is easy to sleep through, because of the smooth, narcotic consistency of both the sound (with the hissing and the purring) and the visuals (black). I think this film was called Alien v Predator Requiem.

Ha!

http://www.popehat.com/2008/11/19/how-do…

How do you tell Al-Qaida From Ralph Nader?

One is contemptible, fanatical vermin responsible for untold human suffering.

The other is an Islamic terrorist group.

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

“The sex is sweet, the sex is sweet, you want it, and you want to go with me.”

By the way, what party does he belong to?

Oh, there it is, in the last paragraph: Democrat.

]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10346 http://tjic.com/?p=10345 http://tjic.com/?p=10345#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:40:51 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10345

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081117/ap_o…

Wis. woman pleads no contest in toilet corpse case

Um….yow.

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

Councilor at Large Michael F. Flaherty wants to make City Hall a green building. But before Flaherty could unveil his proposals yesterday, Mayor Thomas M. Menino said he wants to make the entire vicinity around City Hall a green neighborhood.

And I want a pony that speaks, flies and craps gold coins and diamonds.

Now shut up, you two political hacks.

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/2008…

Referencing.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/WallStreet…

The CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation’s capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy.

More “people” who deserve to be “kicked” in the “bits” …

http://www.popehat.com/2008/11/18/irrati…

Dear folks who use quotation marks inappropriately:

Don’t make “me” come over “there” and “kick” you in the “nuts.”

Ken,

Tell me when the T-shirt with the above text is on sale. I’m in.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10341 http://tjic.com/?p=10340 http://tjic.com/?p=10340#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:58:47 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10340

http://federalistpaupers.com/index.php/2…

More Jetsons, less Mad Max, please.

I dunno.

In the Mad Max series, they at least showed a bit of respect for contract law.

(I crap you not - there are references contracts and deals in the first two movies that make a libertarian or an anarcho-capitalist wonder if George Miller and Byron Kennedy are closet supporters.)

Also, RKBA seems to be respected …

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CoyoteBlo…

Via the Liberty Papers:

U.S. states have not lived up to their commitment to devote a major portion of their huge legal settlement with the tobacco industry a decade ago on anti-smoking efforts, health advocacy groups said on Tuesday.

In the 10 years since the landmark deal, the states have received $79.2 billion of the settlement and another $124.3 billion from tobacco taxes, but have spent only about 3 percent of it - $6.5 billion - on tobacco prevention and cessation programs, the groups said in a report.

Gee, I really thought the settlement was about health care and tobacco education, and now I find out it was just a crass money grab? Who could have ever predicted that?

Those who have read my novel will recognize the sarcasm.

I really don’t understand how anyone can be in favor of government action on just about anything.

99% of it is a scam, destroying massive amounts of value.

Let’s say that the efficiency of the government at doing good with money spent is about 25% (I think that’s generous).

Let’s assume that we have to keep spending 30% of the budget, because even at a 25% efficiency rate, we can’t do with out the government doing a few jobs (I’ll debate that assertion, but let’s accept it for now).

If we cut back 70% of the $3.1 T budget, that’s $2.17 we don’t spend.

Assume that some minor good would have come out of that spending. At 25% call it $0.5 T.

We have saved $1.6 T from being wasted.

That’s about $14k / household.

Of course, the lower tax burden wouldn’t be spread equally - it would be concentrated at the top.

…but do you know what millionaires do when they have more money?

Just like the rest of it, they either spend it, or invest it.

If they spend it - great ! That’s more demand for Tesla roadsters, custom stained glass, catered parties, DVDs, airplanes, horseback riding lessons, and dinners out.

If they invest it - great! That’s more money to grow firms that sell Tesla roadsters, custom stained glass, catered parties, DVDs, airplanes, horseback riding lessons, and dinners out.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10339 http://tjic.com/?p=10338 http://tjic.com/?p=10338#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:45:59 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10338

\http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CoyoteBlo…

Last year, Congress promised to shed light on the secretive process. But the lists of earmarks are still buried in obscure documents that are difficult to find and search…. House disclosure letters, linking lawmakers to companies, were thick volumes of paper kept in a cabinet in the offices of the House Appropriations Committee.

When a reporter for the Congressional Quarterly pointed out how difficult it remains to pull all the information together, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the committee that drafts the defense bill, had a quick answer: “Tough shit.”

Democrats suck.

So do Republicans.

That’s our money, you !@#%-ers!

How dare you?!

Also:

Latrobe Specialty Steel of Latrobe, 40 miles east of Pittsburgh, makes specialty steel for aircraft parts.

In 2006, its parent company, Timken, spent $2.9 million lobbying Congress on various issues and persuaded lawmakers to ban the Defense Department from buying any products using foreign-made specialty steel. As the sole U.S. producer of certain kinds of specialty steel, Latrobe saw its orders climb. Timken then sold Latrobe to a group of investors in a $250 million deal.

But the buy-American restrictions for specialty steel caused serious problems for the Air Force, creating a 17-month lag in getting spare parts for aircraft used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now that is war profiteering.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10338 http://tjic.com/?p=10337 http://tjic.com/?p=10337#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:39:54 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10337 Last week the USPS decided to stop accepting “bound printed matter”. You are no longer allowed to buy postage for bound printed matter at the counter, nor are you permitted to apply postage yourself.

…except, you can submit it at the loading dock, if you’ve got a Postage Imprint Permit (which we do), and you can fill out a PS3605-R.

We would have known this, if only we’d read issue 22241 of the Postal Bulletin. Silly us!

So much of today was spent writing and testing a library that will programmatically fill out a PS3605-R pdf.

(It’s not as simple as it sounds - above and beyond figuring out where each of the 50 or so pieces of data go on several different pages, we also need to store the “bound printed matter” postal rate charts in the database, and round up weights to the nearest pound (except, there are also price points at 1.5, 2.5, and 3.5 pounds), and we need to print out one PS3605-R for each weight class we send, and within each weight class, we have to break the number of packages shipped down by number of postal zones crossed from source to destination…).

Six hours of my life, down the drain.

Ugh.

On the other hand, it’s now done, and we can leverage it to use Postage Imprints for more of our HeavyInk mail, which should speed up shipping a bit.

(subject line hattip)

http://www.typeonline.co.uk/typingspeed….

Your speed was: 91wpm.

You made 5 mistakes

Not bad, given that I use about 2 fingers…

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

The city’s superintendent of cemeteries has been fired for failing to properly supervise his employees, misreporting his work hours, and taking long lunches, city officials said yesterday.

Donald J. Griffis, who has worked for the city for 31 years and last year earned $101,332 with overtime, was fired Friday after a city investigation revealed that one of his former employees, Paul J. Hamm, spent months siphoning gas from a city pump at the cemetery where they worked. The two also spent long lunches drinking alcohol, and on several occasions skipped work afterward, city investigators said.

Hamm, a 22-year city employee who last year earned $79,778 with overtime, resigned Oct. 28 after city officials accused him of stealing hundreds of gallons of fuel since last spring.

By firing an employee for taking gasoline, the government obscures the fact that all of them take tax dollars.

Why, exactly, are the tax payers being asked to pay for a cemetary?

First comment on the article:

Now let’s investigate the Fire Department a little more - especially the fire house in Roslindale (Cummins Hwy & Canterbury) where it is a regular occurence to see firefighters filling their personal vehicles from the on-site city fuel pump

Nice!

http://www.boston.com/news/education/hig…

NU plans to help Boston students

Northeastern will establish a special one-year program for Boston public high school graduates who are not ready for college, as part of a new city initiative.

Great - that’s what American needs: more marginal students entering and then failing out of college, or - perhaps worse yet - graduating with useless degrees.

GM isn’t the only one guilty of taking piles of dollar bills and lighting them on fire.

http://highclearing.com/index.php/archiv…

I share the confidence of everyone here in predicting that Obama will successfully resist the rising chorus of rhetoric from across the spectrum, including people on his own side, and renounce the Washington consensus in favor of protection of civil liberties and basic American principles. I mean, if you can?t trust a guy who rose rapidly through the political game and raised massive amounts of money from all sorts of places in order to acquire the most powerful office in the world, whom can you trust?

I’d be laughing if I wasn’t crying.

(via)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/willwilki…

There is no five year period that I could find in the last thirty years for which GM’s stock price outperformed the S&P 500.

Ouch.

… The market capitalization of GM is now under $2 billion, which is substantially less than that of such icons of our economy as Cognizant Technology Solutions, DaVita, Inc., Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, and the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan.

Double Ouch.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CoyoteBlo…

Regulation is About Protecting Incumbents

… GM made a huge public push for its Chevy Volt over the last 6 months, spending hundreds of million in advertising on a car that does not exist yet. Why would a company near bankrupcy do this? We now know the advertising was aimed at Congress and the Administration, not consumers, trying to burnish their green image to give Democrats enough political cover to vote for the bailout their UAW supporters so desperately need (any chapter 11 would likely result in enormous restructurings of union contracts).

Man, it’s the “all Coyote, all the time” channel here recently, but he’s had a series of great posts, so what can I do.

Go read all of the above-referenced post.

And the Supreme Court said “Constitution? What constitution?”

http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=569

The homes of Susette Kelo and her neighbors have all been torn down or removed. But, except for the remodeling of one government building into another government building, virtually no new development had taken place in the Fort Trumbull district by May, 2008.

Having spent at least $78 million on the Fort Trumbull project, the city had awarded development rights to a company named Corcoran Jennison, which planned to build a hotel, an office complex, and more than 100 upscale housing units. The developer had until November, 2007, to obtain financing.

…that deadline lapsed…

Where once there was a nice little neighborhood with happy productive people, now there is a government created parking lot.

Yay, government!

Thanks for breaking us out of sucky equilibria that exist only because transaction and coordination costs are too high!

(I jest, of course. While, in theory, I accept that “sucky equilibria that exist only because transaction and coordination costs are too high” can exist, in practice, I assert that 99.9% of the time that collective action is “needed”, it’s really not.)

(via)
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10330 http://tjic.com/?p=10329 http://tjic.com/?p=10329#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:53:00 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10329

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12266974…

Over the past decade, the capital destruction by GM has been breathtaking, on a greater scale than documented by Mr. Jensen for the 1980s… a net $182 billion of society’s capital has been pumped into GM over the past decade — a waste of about $1.5 billion per month of national savings. The story at Ford has not been as adverse but is still disheartening, as Ford has invested $155 billion and consumed $8 billion net of depreciation since 1998.

(via)

Actuaries and economists put the value of a human life (via revealed preference in life-saving tradeoffs) at about $1.3 million.

GM has been lining up 38 people against a wall and shooting them in the back of the head, every day, for decades.

38 people a day.

1153 a month.

13,846 a year.

Over the last decade, GM has destroyed as much human value as 47 9/11 attacks.

Hey, I’ve got an idea - let’s tax every working American and give GM a lot more money, so they can do it again for another 10 years!

Because, you know, “we don’t want to hollow out American manufacturing”, and “unionized workers deserve $75/hour in wages and benefits”, even if their job description is “destroy value as fast as possible”.

By the way, in the time it took you to read this blog post, one more human life worth of utility has been snuffed out by GM.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10329 http://tjic.com/?p=10328 http://tjic.com/?p=10328#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:45:33 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10328

http://www.boston.com/news/education/hig…

About two-thirds of the city’s high school graduates in 2000 who enrolled in college have failed to earn degrees, according to a first-of-its-kind study being released today.

The findings represent a major setback for a city school system that made significant strides in recent years with percentages of graduates enrolling in college consistently higher than national averages, according to the report by the Boston Private Industry Council and the School Department.

the study shows that the number who went on to graduate is lower than the national average…

This is just like how law schools enact racist admission requirements, so as to boost the number of blacks accepted. Yay! We’re progressive!.

…and then, three years later, most of those black students admitted in a manner that paid more attention to the color of their skin than to their academic potential, are out on the street and deep in debt…because they never really had the skills to be their in the first place.

The idiots in the Boston school system who pushed kids who were not capable of doing college work, and had no reason to be at college in the first place, into colleges, because it made them (the bureaucrats) feel better about themselves should be forced to look at the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars that they’ve squandered (not to mention the human costs of tens of thousands of wasted hours, and years of forgone work experience and wages).

This is a typical educational establishment boondoggle, and any half bright libertarian could have told them exactly what they were going to get, ahead of time, while not wasting a single dime.

Idiots. Idiots. Idiots.

Then again, we are talking about government, so that’s pretty much a given.

The students’ failure to complete college could exacerbate the fiscal problems in the state’s economy, which requires a highly skilled workforce, say business leaders and educators.

Hey, molecular chemists eat french fries and burgers just like everyone else - these college dropouts will get jobs.

Of course, thanks to the utopian progressives, many of them will be saddled with student loans (but don’t worry - I imagine that, one way or another, we taxpayers ate most of the cost).
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10328 http://tjic.com/?p=10327 http://tjic.com/?p=10327#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:39:03 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10327

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CoyoteBlo…

Choices Make a Difference

I have no problem if women want to spend four years at college studying (at their own expense) the role of indigenous women in the postmodernist Marxist movement of 1960’s Paraguay, or whatever. However, I do have a problem when these same folks later complain that their income is below average or they are under-represented in the board room. Just peruse the top and bottom of this list at Carpe Diem.

College degrees most dominated by women include library science, consumer science, social science, education, language, psychology, and gender studies. Top college degrees most dominated by men include construction trades, engineering tech, transportation, military technologies, engineering and computer science.

Sorry, but I cannot imagine any possible restructuring of society and the economy where the first list is more valuable and has higher income potential than the second list.

Well said.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10327 http://tjic.com/?p=10326 http://tjic.com/?p=10326#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:37:03 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10326 Anyone with information is encouraged to leave a comment.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/17/vic…

Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute writes about the effect of the economic slowdown in China.

The “Post Carbon Institute” ?

Uh oh - here comes the stupid!

Check out their website - the subtitle is “Reduce Consumption : Produce Locally”. Of course, with containerized shipping, transportation is only about 1% of the final price of a typical good, so “producing locally”, where - on average - the population does not have the comparative advantage in producing thing X, one actually increases consumption of resources (including labor).

But that

• is an objective fact
• is something you only learn by reading
• is at odds with typical received leftist talking point du jour
• doesn’t ideologically support hippies who want to do summer-camp crafts and have a justification for other hippies to buy their output at 5x the fair market value

…so there’s no “good” reason to accept it.

So, yeah, hippies, forge on with your totally debunked “produce locally” nonsense.

[T]he fact that the US meltdown has now flowed into China is potentially disastrous … as its exports shrink and its factories shut, the meltdown is starting to flow back to America again, making an ugly situation even worse.

Sigh. The meltdown “has now” “flowed” ?

When it hit, it hit everywhere. The “contagion” is one of confidence and perceptions, and it was near instantaneous.

The solution (for the US, anyway) … rebuilding of the American and British manufacturing economies

How can you “rebuild” something that has continued to grow unchecked for 200 years? Since the end of WWII, our manufacturing output has grown at 3.7% per year, compounded. [note]. Anyone who thinks that the US economy has “hollowed out” is listening to right-wing populist idiots like Bill O’Reilly, or left-wing populist idiots like anyone at NPR.

(less so the European)

Oh, of course. The Anglo-capitalists (US and UK) are “doing it wrong!”, but the sophisticated Europeans are doing it right.

Of course, actually looking at the manufacturing output growth rates of the US, UK, and Euro-zone show that … wait for it .. it’s not an English speaking country that’s in last place.

… return of the knowledge and skills to recreate it and run it.”

How, exactly, is the US growing it’s manufacturing output if we don’t have the knowledge and skills to manufacture things?

The confused populism coupled with the economic illiteracy that produces such claptrap like clockwork makes me sad.

Memo to populists, both left and right:

• production efficiency has been going up for decades
• this is a good thing, because it produces the same amount of standard-of-living-goodness while consuming less inputs (like labor, energy, etc.)
• this tends to result in declines in employment
• repeat: this is a good thing - working in a well lit, quiet Apple Store is, for most people, more fun than being an industrial welder
• when other economies bootstrap themselves out of the hell hole called poverty, they add jobs
• just because we lose jobs in area X and someone else gains jobs in area X does not mean that those jobs were “exported”
• … when our cigarette consumption drops, because of better education, and cigarette consumption increases there, because they’re finally rich enough to smoke, did we “export our cigarette consumption”? No.

also:

• not all people are equally good at turning X into Y, for various X and Y
• transportation is really cheap
• … thus, it makes sense to ship the materials from where they’re plentiful, to where the best X-into-Y people live, and then ship the finished goods to where they’re wanted

Please READ A BOOK.
]]> http://tjic.com/?feed=rss2&p=10325 http://tjic.com/?p=10324 http://tjic.com/?p=10324#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:02:48 +0000 tjic http://tjic.com/?p=10324 A BBC host who is too educated to be racist (his words) gets his racist ass recorded and handed to him.

Nice!

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexcha…

Should Britain join the euro before its too late?

Better yet, it should join the US dollar…

“Lord help those that stand in your way or tick you off!”

Heh.

Your result for What Spice Are You Test…

A Habanero Pepper

30% Habanero, 30% Sage, 0% Thyme, 0% Ginger, 10% Garlic, 10% Curry, 20% Cinnamon and 0% Oregano!

Take What Spice Are You Test at HelloQuizzy

(via)

http://polarangel.org/lfdc/?p=88

The God Who Loves You

by Carl Dennis

It must be troubling for the god who loves you

To ponder how much happier you’d be today

Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.

It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings

Driving home from the office, content with your week -

Three fine houses sold to deserving families -

Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened

Had you gone to your second choice for college,

Interesting poem, and interesting thoughts.

On the other hand, I think that God is only upset when one makes choices that one knows to be wrong (in a moral sense).

You’re content, but not perfectly happy? The emotionally poor middle class will be with you always.

He is not, I suspect, a global utility optimizer. He does not fret that you might have written an amazing new novel, or even come up with the cure for cancer, if only you’d chosen green instead of blue - He cares about you choosing black instead of white.

Also, something that’s bugged me for decades - can He imagine a world path without His thought on it constituting a simulation sufficient to create it?

I may believe in Many Worlds not because of compelling evidence, but because it follows from omnipotence.

Of course, if you’ve got Many Worlds, then what of free will? If you make all choices, do you make any choices?

We’ll see if it ever amounts to anything - I did a ton of volunteering for Habitat for Humanity back in college, then when I moved to Boston I tried to volunteer, and got ignored multiple times.

So far, though, one OSM guy has written back and said “X is in on Tuesdays, he’ll get back to you”.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_bri…

Supreme Court Upholds Bill Of Rights In 5-4 Decision

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news…

Tara Mangan, who lives in a duplex, said that she told the deputy how to get to her neighbor’s door and that he was not entering a hostile situation. Somehow the deputy passed her door and ended up in the back yard, where [ ten month old ] Lincoln was on a leash, Mangan said…

The sheriff’s office would only say that the deputy went around the building, the dog lunged at him, so he shot.

Various theories:

1. It’s inevitable that dogs get shot during the The War on Some Drugs.
2. Better training plus accountability (like “cop pays $10k out of his own pocket every time he shoots a dog”), could drastically curtail this.
3. There are some good cops, but a lot of bullies and psycopaths (or near psycopaths, hitting some, but not all, of the DSM diagnostic criteria) are drawn to the police force, and are accepted.

I believe a combination of numbers two and three.

…plus number zero: The War on Some Drugs is an unconstitutional make-work program for cops and prosecutors who would otherwise be working real jobs and contributing to the economy in some productive way.

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