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Obit watch: March 29, 2013.

Friday, March 29th, 2013

Paul S. Williams, noted music critic, founder of Crawdaddy. Hollywood Reporter. Locus Online.

The Locus Online obit touches on this briefly, but Mr. Williams was a friend of Philip K. Dick and, after Dick’s death, his literary executor. Mr. Williams founded the Philip K. Dick Society, which was a major force in getting Dick’s works out in front of the public. I did volunteer work as a secretary for the PKD Society for a period of time; Mr. Williams was always incredibly nice to me when we spoke, but I get the feeling he was the kind of person who was incredibly nice to everyone he met.

Post-PKD Society, he also was the force behind The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, which would make him a hero of mine even without the PKD connection.

If you want to get a feel for his writing and his philosophy, I commend to your attention his book The 20th Century’s Greatest Hits: A Top 40 List.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

More unintended consequences.

Thursday, March 28th, 2013

Picked this up from Overlawyered, and thought it deserved wider circulation.

Woman and a friend are having coffee. Friend mentions that her daughter just had her first baby. The daughter works in a job that pays just above minimum wage, so money is tight. Daughter stretches her money by shopping the second-hand market for baby stuff. But daughter can’t find any used cribs for sale.

I had to tell my friend that her daughter could not find a second-hand crib because the CPSC basically outlawed selling them. The CPSC has put in place a new safety standard for cribs and, by the law’s terms, all cribs, regardless of when they were made or where they are sold, must meet these new standards. Because the standard is fairly new, cribs meeting the new standard have not yet cycled down to the resale market. And because of the standard, the new cribs are quite expensive, so they will probably be used for a long time before they are available to be bought second-hand. Therefore, those consumers who count on the resale market for their basic needs—such as a crib—are out of luck.

Daughter is trying to make do with a used “play yard”. “One of its sides is broken but it has been mended with a metal rod and tape.” Not the safest thing in the world.

Here’s the punchline: the author of that blog entry is CPSC commissioner Nancy Nord.

This conversation led me to wonder if we as Commissioners are doing as much as we should to consider the full consequences of our decisions.

I’m willing to bet that people warned commissioner Nord, and the other commissioners, that this kind of thing would happen: you dry up the used crib market, and people are going to resort to alternatives that may be even less safe than a used crib. I’m also willing to bet that commissioner Nord ignored those warnings. I’m glad she’s had her moment on the road to Damascus, but it seems to me to be too little, too late.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Safety | 1 Comment »

Random notes: March 28, 2013.

Thursday, March 28th, 2013

Lawrence threw me a nice backlink yesterday, pointing out that Bloomberg’s tobacco proposals will just put money in the pockets of organized crime.

But surely there’s hope for NYC? Surely they’ve learned and will elect someone unlike Bloomberg?

Nope. The NYT profiles Joseph J. Lhota, deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani and censorious asshat.

Now, as Mr. Lhota promotes himself as a moderate Republican candidate for mayor of New York with urban sensibilities that the national party lacks, his handling of the episode stands out as a deeply discordant moment, raising questions about how he would operate in a diverse city whose current mayor champions unpleasant speech from every quarter.

Hahahhahaha. Bloomberg, champion of free speech. Unless it is about guns. Or tobacco. Or soda. Or food.

Obit watch: James Herbert, noted British horror novelist.

Posted in Art, Books, Clippings, Law, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Don’t be evil (part 2)

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free. You’d open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done. The miserable annual IRS shuffle, gone.

Great idea. Why don’t we have it?

One word: Intuit.

This doesn’t come as a great shock to me, but I stopped using Intuit products years ago: TurboTax was DRM infested, and the Mac versions of Quicken became steaming piles of crap. I haven’t seen anything that would make me want to go back to using an Intuit product again, ever.

Posted in Clippings, Politics, Stupid | Comments Closed

Random notes: March 27, 2013.

Wednesday, March 27th, 2013

State Senator John Whitmire is the head of the Texas Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee. As head of that committee, it isn’t unusual for him to hear from prison inmates. Sometimes, those communications come in the form of death threats. (Sen. Whitmire was in the news a few years back over the whole “inmates with illegal cell phones” issue.)

Anyway, death threats aren’t unusual and aren’t generally worth reporting. But this one deserves notice. Whitmire

…was in no danger from the inmate, said Bruce Toney, inspector general of the Department of Criminal Justice. The inmate was a confidential informant who tried to recruit other people to devise a plot to kill the senator so he could report them, believing it could earn him cash or a reduced prison sentence, Toney said.

More:

The inmate’s name was not released, but Toney said he was a confidential informant “who in the past had provided information, some of it credible.”
“Once we started investigating, we found it basically was a scam he was working to try to get a bunch of ridiculous things for himself,” Toney said. “And we found he was the one actually trying to get other people interested so he could get them in trouble.”

Mmmmmm-hmmmm. It isn’t the “scam” part that gets me: if I was in a Texas prison, I’d probably do everything I could to get my sentence reduced. It’s the “some of it credible” part. Apparently they’ve used this guy as an informant in the past; now that they’ve established he’s a scammer, how do we know any of the evidence he’s provided is credible? And are they going to go back and review the other cases he’s been involved in?

Does the government have the legal authority to set a minimum price for goods? What if the goods in question are tobacco products?

…the second bill establishes a minimum price for cigarettes and cigarillos, or little cigars, of $10.50 a pack, the first time such a strategy has been used to combat smoking. The bill also prohibits retailers from redeeming coupons or offering other discounts, like two-for-one deals.

Posted in Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Don’t be evil.

Tuesday, March 26th, 2013

This isn’t about Google Reader or Google Keep (though I do like this take on the latter). I ran across this story on the Y Combinator Twitter feed the other day, and this is the first chance I’ve had to blog it; I would like to see it get more attention.

In brief, there is a company called the Knife Depot that sells knives online. I have never bought anything from the Knife Depot, but that’s just because I haven’t been buying a lot of knives online; I certainly have not heard anything bad about the company.

The Knife Depot also had a Google Adwords account, which brought in “a good slice of its revenue”.

The Knife Depot sells what are commonly known as “assisted opening” knives. These are not switchblades, but knives that can be opened with one hand by applying pressure on a part of the knife. (The Knife Depot blog has a good video explaining the difference between “assisted opening” and “switchblade” knives.) Obviously, “assisted opening” knives are very useful things if you’re missing an arm, or frequently operate in situations where you only have one hand free, or have certain physical disabilities, or just like knives.  “Assisted opening” knives are legal pretty much everywhere in the United States, including New York City (in spite of what the criminals who run NYC believe).

However, somebody in the Google Adwords department got bent out of shape and told the Knife Depot: either stop selling “assisted opening” knives, or lose your Adwords account.

Note that Google didn’t just say “you can’t advertise these knives using Adwords”. Even if the Knife Depot agreed not to use Adwords to advertise “assisted opening” knives, Google would still yank their Adwords account if they continued to sell those knives on their site.

The Knife Depot, being good and honorable people, told Google to take their Adwords account and stick it where the sun don’t shine.

“So what?” you say. “Google is a private business and can set whatever policies they want for Adwords. Why get bent out of shape over this?”

Here’s why: at the same time Google was threatening the Knife Depot, Google continued to allow Adwords advertising of “assisted opening” knives from other vendors. Like Amazon. And Wal-Mart. And Bass Pro Shops. I believe Google is still allowing Adwords advertising of “assisted opening” knives from those vendors, based on the results of a Google search for “Kershaw knives” done as I was writing this post.

Yes, this is hypocritical and evil. So much so that the Knife Depot blog entry quotes an email from a Google employee who called out the policy discrepancy, requested an explanation of why other vendors were allowed to use Adwords and the Knife Depot was not…and never got a reply.

I’ve had it in my head to do a post about Android/iPhone based on some things said in recent podcasts. I may still do that, though time has sort of gotten past me. The key thing that bothers me is that some people seem to prefer Android/Google because “Google does a better job of knowing about me”, without realizing that’s a problem. You are giving your information to a company that, to be polite, hasn’t proven it can be trusted with it. The Knife Depot is just example #947 of why Google hasn’t proven that.

I commented to someone, back a decade ago, that we didn’t have to worry about the government or big corporations invading our privacy without our consent; we’d happily give up our privacy for 75 cents off a box of Pop-Tarts. It is worse than I thought ten years ago; now we’re giving up our privacy for…what, exactly? A substitute notepad application? A free copy of The Da Vinci Code?

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Knives, Stupid | Comments Closed

Firing watch.

Tuesday, March 26th, 2013

In great haste, because I am tied up and down with stuff:

Tubby Smith out as coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers.

Smith was 124-81 (.610) in six seasons at Minnesota. But he was just 46-62 in Big Ten play and never finished higher than sixth in the conference.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Which would you rather have?

Sunday, March 24th, 2013

A firetruck? Or a zoo?

I’m on the firetruck side. Along I-35, in the general area of Round Rock, there are two places that appear to have used fire trucks for sale. I haven’t actually checked out either one, because I didn’t know what to look for in a used fire truck and I wasn’t sure I could afford one anyway. So this article delights me. Key points:

  • Used firetrucks can be very cheap. Like almost couch change cheap.
  • “…buy a truck from an active fire department (as opposed to a private owner) because many older private firetrucks have been neglected and no longer have functioning pumps.”
  • Buying a used firetruck is another instance where it is a good idea to buy local. I would not have thought of this, and did not realize this, but: “firetrucks aren’t built to drive highway miles or drive at highway speeds”. This does make sense, but it leaves you with a problem; if you don’t buy local, how do you get it home? (In the author’s case, by truck from Ohio to Montana, and it cost more to transport the truck than he paid for it.)
  • It is worth the time to research local laws.
  • It is also worth the time to think about where you’re going to park your fire truck. Not just at home (will it fit in the garage?) but when you go to the store to get butter and cheese.

I do wonder what an auto liability policy on a used firetruck runs per year, but I’m not going to ask: the author’s blog uses the Gawker comments system, which I refuse to register for.

Posted in Clippings | Comments Closed

Face Palm Sunday.

Sunday, March 24th, 2013

If Jesus were prosecuted today under Texas law, what would we do?
Would we sentence him to a life behind bars, or would we sentence him to death?

Gee, wouldn’t that depend on what charges Jesus was being prosecuted under, and whether any of those charges are capital crimes?

In the live, unscripted mock trial, Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor and now a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, plays the prosecutor. Jeanne Bishop, a Chicago public defender who teaches law at Northwestern University, plays Jesus’ attorney. Both are against the death penalty, and though they hope that support for abolishing capital punishment can rise from faith communities, they emphasize that there is no argument for or against it during the presentation. “This is not an anti-death penalty diatribe,” Bishop said.

Mmmmm-hmmmm.

Christians seem to make a distinction between Jesus’ wrongful execution and the execution of criminals, in part, Osler said, “because Christians tend to see Christ as unimaginably good and capital defendants as unimaginably bad. (But) Jesus taught that, ‘When you visit someone in prison, you visit me.’ He didn’t say when you visit the innocent person.”

And maybe Christians make this distinction because Jesus didn’t kill his eight-year-old son for insurance money. Maybe Christians make this distinction because Jesus didn’t rape an 11-year-old girl and her mother and set their house on fire. Just saying.

In the enactment, Jesus has already been convicted of blasphemy. After witnesses are called and attorneys give closing arguments, audience members break up into juries of 12 and have two questions to decide. First, is there a probability that, if not executed, Jesus would commit criminal acts that would constitute a continuing threat to society?

I am not a lawyer, but to the best of my knowledge:

  • The state of Texas does not have a blasphemy law.
  • If the state does have a blasphemy law, it probably would not pass constitutional muster and could not be enforced.
  • If the state of Texas did have a blasphemy law, and if such a law did pass constitutional muster, I seriously doubt that it would carry the death penalty, and if it did, that also probably would not pass constitutional muster. If the Supreme Court is unwilling to allow the death penalty for raping a minor, how likely would they be to allow it for “blasphemy”?

I think it is worth having a discussion about the death penalty. I know I keep threatening to do this, but I still want to write an essay about the death penalty, my qualms about it, and why I still believe it should be an option.

Osler, the author of “Jesus on Death Row: The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment,” said the presentation is only meant to challenge Christians to think about the death penalty in the context of their faith. “For Christians, part of that context is the trial and execution of Jesus,” Osler said.

And part of that context is that horrible people do horrible things to other people, and forfeit their right to be a part of society. It is worth debating whether that forfeit should be a lifetime behind bars, or a needle in the arm. But by framing this in the context of “would we do this to Jesus?” without considering that Jesus committed no crime under Texas law – indeed, rigging the game so that Jesus has already been convicted of a non-crime, and the jury is only supposed to consider punishment – well, my feeling is that Osler and Bishop are framing their challenge in a dishonest way.

Jesus taught that, ‘When you visit someone in prison, you visit me.’ He didn’t say when you visit the innocent person.”

Jesus taught a lot of other stuff, too. Like

It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.

and

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

If ministers want to visit prisons and provide religious council to the inmates, even the ones on death row, that’s awesome. More power to them. But their dominion is the heavens, not Earth. As a friend of mine used to say about some folks, “Jesus may love you, but I think you’re s–t wrapped in skin.”

Edited to add: Mike the Musicologist made a good point, which I am ashamed to admit I missed. This whole debate is stupid for another reason: Christ’s sacrifice on the cross to redeem mankind’s sins is the central concept of the Christian religion.

You can sit there and debate whether Christ should or should not have gotten the death penalty. But without the crucifixion of Christ, you don’t have the redemption of mankind from sin. Without Christ getting the death penalty, you don’t have Christianity (or Catholicism). At best, what you’ve got is Judaism where Christ is an important prophet of the Second Coming.

Christ has to die. That’s the entire plan. And this debate ignores that point.

(Mike’s point reminds me of another one I’ve been thinking about for a while. Namely, Judas gets a bum rap, and is probably sitting on God’s right hand in heaven. Without the betrayal by Judas, there’s no trial, there’s no crucifixion, there’s no resurrection, and again there’s no Christianity. All Judas did was set in motion the plan that had been in the works for thousands of years. Judas was doing what he had to do to fulfill the plan; blaming him is like blaming the last snowflake in an avalanche.)

Edited to add 2: You know, I bet the idea that “Judas got a bum rap” is probably one of the many heresies (like the Manichaean heresy) that existed in the early church. But I have yet to find an example of it in practice, or even a name for it.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Stupid | 2 Comments »

Firing watch.

Sunday, March 24th, 2013

Sources are reporting that Ben Howland is going to be fired from his position as men’s basketball coach at UCLA.

Howland has a 233-107 record in 10 seasons at UCLA. He took the Bruins to three Final Fours and won four conference championships.

The team went 25-10 this year, and lost on Friday to Minnesota.

The Tampa Bay Lightning (wait, they play hockey in Florida?) fired coach Guy Boucher.

Boucher, who led the Lightning to the Eastern Conference final in 2010-11, his first season, is 84-62-19 in two-plus seasons behind the bench. Tampa Bay, which seems as if it will miss the playoffs for a second straight season, is on a 7-16-1 skid this season after a 6-1-0 start.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Gonzaga?

Sunday, March 24th, 2013

What is wrong with you people?

You go in as a #1 seed, and you lose this early to Wichita State?

You’ve cheated me out of my $5 worth of entertainment, and now I have to pay off my bet to Lawrence.

See if I bet on you next year.

Posted in Clippings, Sports, Wagers | Comments Closed

You don’t say?

Saturday, March 23rd, 2013

Boris Berezovsky, 67, an exiled Russian ex-tycoon who played a key role in bringing Vladimir Putin to power, only to have a bitter falling out, has died in Britain, according to his family and Russian media reports.

The LAT goes on to report that

…there were conflicting reports Saturday about the circumstances of his death.
Rossiya 24, a Russian television news channel, reported that he was found dead in the bathroom of his London home. Other reports said he died at his home in the county of Surrey in the south of England. Well-known Russian lawyer Alexander Dobrovinsky said he learned from a close friend of Berezovsky that he had committed suicide.

Since the UK has strict gun control laws, I feel certain that Mr. Berezovsky probably did not commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest five times with a bolt-action .22 rifle. But that’s probably the only thing that can be said for sure.

Posted in Clippings, Obits | 1 Comment »

Star Trekkin’, across the universe…

Friday, March 22nd, 2013

The Internal Revenue Service says it was a mistake for employees to use an agency studio in Maryland to film a parody of the TV show “Star Trek.”

More:

The IRS says the video, along with a training video that parodied the TV show “Gilligan’s Island,” cost about $60,000.

This is a story I am not proud of. In my defense, I was younger and dumber at the time.

A long time ago, I worked for the IRS; I was a “data transcriber”, which meant I typed in information from tax forms.

One day, they called all of the employees in the Austin service center together for a special assembly. It turned out the purpose of this assembly was to sell us on purchasing US Savings Bonds…and the powers that be had decided the best way to do this was to show us a “special episode” of “The Golden Girls” that had the characters explaining how wonderful savings bonds were. I don’t believe this was ever broadcast; I think it was something the government commissioned from the producers of “The Golden Girls”. I am willing to bet everyone got paid for their work, and I am also willing to bet that it was more than $60,000 even in 1986 dollars.

Posted in Clippings, Stupid, TV | Comments Closed

Quiz show.

Friday, March 22nd, 2013

Harvard Quiz Bowl teams that won four championships between 2009 and 2011 have had those wins vacated because of a cheating scandal involving one student.

…

Two other students from Quiz Bowl teams at The Charter School of Wilmington, a high school in Delaware, and the University of Michigan were accused of similar breaches, though only Harvard had multiple national championship titles vacated.

Posted in Clippings, Stupid | Comments Closed

Banana republicans on trial: March 22, 2013.

Friday, March 22nd, 2013

I was out until late last night (having a very nice celebratory dinner at Bordeaux’s Steakhouse in Dripping Springs: thanks, Mom!) and wasn’t able to report on the latest Bell developments until this morning. That’s probably for the best, as I can link to the second day LAT coverage rather than the breaking news.

“I have never heard of anything like this in my 40 years of law,” said Robert Sheahen, a veteran Los Angeles criminal defense attorney.

What happened? Briefly, hell broke loose in California.

…the judge declared a mistrial on the outstanding counts, saying “all hell has broken loose” with the deeply divided jury.

As you may recall, the jury returned verdicts on some of the charges, but remained undecided on others. The judge sent them back Thursday morning to continue deliberations.

An exasperated Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy drew the case to a close after a bizarre day in which one juror asked to reconsider the guilty verdicts reached Wednesday. Then, an anonymous juror passed a note to Kennedy urging her to “remind the jury to remain respectful and not to make false accusations and insults to one another.” Kennedy refused to set aside the guilty verdicts.

These are different notes than the ones members of the jury sent on Wednesday, by the way.

What does all this mean?

1. “Prosecutors declined to comment because of the upcoming trial of Robert Rizzo, the former city administrator alleged to be the mastermind of the corruption. But an official said no decision has been made about retrying the defendants on the remaining charges.”

2. “[Former council member George] Cole’s attorney, Ronald Kaye, said the jury’s behavior suggested ‘coercion and intimidation’ that throws the guilty verdicts into question.
Attorney Shepard Kopp, who represented Jacobo, said the jury’s conduct is ‘tremendous legal grounds for motion for a new trial.'”

Basically, the jury verdicts stand, but it sounds like the defense has a chance to get them thrown out on appeal, if they can prove jury misconduct. My recommendation: buy popcorn futures.

Posted in Beef, California Über Alles, Clippings, Food, Law | 1 Comment »

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