Tuesday rapid fire

• Inventor's 2020 vision: to help 1bn of the world's poorest see better
• Bleeding Heart Tightwads - the right gives more to charity than the left
• Burger King launches beef-scented body spray
• The neurotypicals conspire against us with homeopathic remedies

The line of last night...

(Woman I was talking to referring to band on stage)

"The singer sounds like he's hitting a baby with a cat"

Something funny

From this Wikipedia page on Melungeons

On the other hand, in the tensions about race and slavery leading up to the Civil War, several Melungeon men were tried in Hawkins County, Tennessee, in 1846 for "illegal voting", under suspicion of being black.

It brings to mind the Dick Gregory joke

"I'd rather be black than gay because you never have to tell your parents you're black."

Link clearing roundup

Thoughts on the recent events soon, here we are just to clear off some tabs

• Walmart is going to carry the G1
• The coming liberal area will be funny
• Fun Alaskan secessionists
  
• One of the weirdest ads ever

Weird news from the Motherland

82-year-old traded drugs for sex, Kentucky cops say - in Berea no less!

Loner Updates

Sorry for all the light blogging - I've been in a frenzy building the new company/web application. I also installed (with a friend) a new carrying beam in the basement - the house is far more stable and level now.

In the meantime - check out the following links

• British Health Services uses private doctors for their own people. It's a lot like American public school teachers sending their own kids to private school. It's a dramatic lack of faith in the system, but I suppose the government knows best, just like they say.
• In Nebraska, the safe haven laws, usually intended for infants, can be used for children up to age 18. People have been coming in from out of state to abandon their teenagers.
  

When white people talk for a long time

The author of "Stuff White People Like"


And http://stuffaspergerpeoplelike.com/ like is eerily similar to my life.

Saturday link clearing roundup

• Visual thinking from the 1960s
• Schelling and the Nuclear Taboo
• Mexican cartels running pot farms in U.S. national forest - who says no one makes things in America anymore!
• The Pill makes women pick bad mates
• 'Peter Pan', 'Snow White' busted at Disneyland - People and their free time...
  

Least surprising headline ever

Report: Crack users with HIV engage in unprotected sex

Only in Atlanta

I went to the all night convenience store last night on a beer run after we ran out at the recording studio. Ahead of me in line was an obvious heroin addict (lots of track marks) wearing pajamas. Behind and to the side of me was was an attractive debutante type having a loud conversation on her cell phone. The heroin addict is having a loud conversation with the clerk about her kids (apparently it's a lot of work but they're worth it); the debutante is having a loud conversation on her cell phone that ended with "Some people have NO MANNERS!".

I savored the irony for an hour or so.

Link clearing blog post

• Garet Garrett - an early libertarian writer, I just added his Atlas Shrugged precursor novel to my amazon.com wish list
• This story about a black widow who has just recently been revealed

Jeff Carstensen was spooked when he learned his grandmother planned to buy him a $100,000 life insurance policy -- and name herself the beneficiary.


"She told me that people of our stature have insurance policies on each other," he said. "That way, if something happens to you, you take care of me, and if something happens to me, I take care of you. It was all too suspicious. So I got out of there any way I could, as soon as I could."

Saturday reading

• From George Will -

  America says to foreign producers: We prefer not to pump our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering its value, for our benefit. Let it not be said that America has no energy policy.

• Wilkerson on Global Warming
• Joel Splolsky on Architecture Astronauts - worth reading, especially in conjunction with John Robb.
• This is weird
• Inventions by year
  

Homeless James Bond

Via Soob, check out Homeless James Bond

Advances in child management

A wonderful technical acheivement

Conflict follows device that drives away teen loiterers
A wall-mounted gadget designed to drive away loiterers with a shrill, piercing noise audible only to teens and young adults is infuriating civil liberties groups and tormenting young people after being introduced into the United States.

Such wonderful times we live in.

Signs that democracy has run it's course

The candidates are appearing on wrestling shows.

The best graffitti ever

See it here. Just imagine the preparation involved...

The pink horse of the gold digger Apocalypse

Check out SugarDaddyForMe.com. It's where attractive young women meet wealthy men, online! It has the notable quote

Men want the younger and more attractive women. And, women, want the man with the bigger and more sheltered cave.

Just in time for Valentines day!

From this article from The Atlantic

Now, though, I realize that if I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, I’m at the age where I’ll likely need to settle for someone who is settling for me.

Tuesday links

• Iraq vets take lemons and make.... something.
• Delphine LaLurie - very creepy
• Time management
• I do believe I'll be building these bookshelves
• Ron Paul - comic book president
• Putting Bush on Mt Rushmore - be sure to read this one from Scott Adams
  

Me and MasterChief

My visit to MicroSoft was interesting.

Amazing Time Savers!

I've been looking for this clip online for years now, and it finally made it's appearance. Check out Amazing Time Savers. You do have to watch it till the end.

Amazing Time Savers

An advancement in gender equality

While perusing my spam folder to make sure there were no false positives, I came across this little gem amongst the enlargement and Viagra ads

LADIES, bigger your asset now, give your mate a big surprise

SizeUpBreast is a safe all herbal formula that helps woman to increase theirBreast Size

- help with sagging problems
- has a powerful phyto-hormonal action that leads to the growth and
development of the areoli and consequently TheBreast size.

* if your are her BF/HUBBY, buy your girl this 100% safe BreastEnhancement Pill
* you will feel proud of having LargerBoobie mate

About time women got their share of annoying email.

What I like about India

They're quite weird, but in a self-contained, needs no explanation way, asking nothing of anyone.

Case in point - Man in India Marries Dog As Atonement. If this was in Europe or America, There would be some symbolic flagellation, fake tears, and cries for understanding. In India, the guy just married a stray dog, no fuss, no muss.

Weird things on Craig's List

While I was uploading some large files I came across these two items on the "Women Seeking Men" section

Item One:

Hi. I am staying with friends outside Buckhead, BUt I have to move..I am 25 former Bad girl (was in trouble, not now)single. Looking to move in and COOK CLEAN DO LAUNDRY AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR NEEDS in xchange for rent and....I am very good looking..5'6" 111 lt brown hair green eyes. and for real...Race doesnt matter

Item Two:

I am seeking a professional man that owns his own business and calls all the shots. To describe my self a little, I am multi-ethnic, 5'5, 130lbs, carmel skin, white teeth, nice curly medium length hair, very intelligent, discrete and sweet.

I'm seeking employment, something 40 hours a weeks( I have a resume)
The beneifits are office sex with me, or a side relationship.
If you are serious respond with a place where we can interview(not a hotel or a house)and a job details.

I'm not sure which combination of sued/murdered/robbed/conned would result, but at least two of them seem certain. Does people post these things because they work, or is it just a cry of desperation?

For your Halloween reading

Via McArdle, the physics of Halloween Monsters.

In this day and age

Crew wins deadly pirate battle off Somalia

What I'm reading while uploading file...

• Monkey Attack!
• A long profile of David Simon, creator of the Wire, and Homicide, Life on the Streets
  
• This article and this one got a student newspaper pulled, maybe there's hope for this new generation.
• Advanced Flash techniques
  

People are strange

From the AJC; it seems that someone has been stalking Garrison Keillor

Garrison Keillor has gotten a restraining order against a Georgia woman he claims has made telephone calls and sent him explicit e-mails and disturbing gifts, including a petrified alligator foot and dead beetles.
...

Campbell said Keillor had misunderstood the letters, e-mails, packages and phone calls. She said she was never closer to his house than the sidewalk.

"I believe that he's paranoid, or some woman, his wife, is upset and told him he has to do something about it," she said.

Life is stranger than we can imagine. Garrison Keillor?

Three interesting things

• There are more World of Warcraft players than there are farmers (from Paul Krugman via MR)
• The reason the average car produces X many tons of CO2 (a figure I always found fishy) is due to the fact that the carbon bonds with oxygen already existing in the air, which never occurred to me until I read this article. The majority of the actual mass (the O2) comes mostly from the existing air.
• John Edwards, still not popular! It says good things about America, and the Democratic party that he's doing well. I suppose the Republican alternative to him is Tom Tancredo.
• From this BloggingHeads.tv - "John Kerry was a Democrat's idea of what the Republicans like". The Republicans seem to be making the same desperate mistake with Giuliani right now.
  

A weird story

Combining characters from The Departed, Mississippi Burning and Donnie Brasco. In real life no less.

Russian Weirdness

From the AJC (again)

Woman's 12th Baby Weighs Over 17-Pounds
A small Russian city just got a really big addition: a 17-pound, 1 ounce baby whose mother had already delivered 11 other children.

Tatiana Khalina, 42, delivered the girl by Caesarean section at a maternity clinic in Aleisk, a town of 30,000 people in the Altai region in southern Siberia, a nurse at the clinic said Thursday.
...
The Guinness Book of World Records says the heaviest baby ever was born in the United States in 1879. It weighed 23 pounds, 12 ounces and died 11 hours after birth. Guinness says they heaviest surviving baby was born in 1955 in Italy, weighing in at 22 pounds, 8 ounces.

The criminal side of over coming handicaps

From the AJC

Armless Gwinnett man involved in deadly fight jailed
A disabled artist known for painting with his feet was jailed this week on charges related to a deadly brawl with another man earlier this month.

William "Rusty" Redfern was booked into the Gwinnett County Detention Center Wednesday on a misdemeanor charge of affray, a legal term for fighting in public, and later released on $1,200 bond.
...
Witnesses said the men yelled at each other from across the street. Redfern, who was born with no right arm and only a stump for a left arm, then ran into Teer's driveway and head-butted him.

Teer, 49, died minutes later. Police initially suspected Teer died from the head-butt. However, a subsequent autopsy determined that he died of a heart attack. Teer had been suffering from coronary artery disease, according to the Gwinnett County Medical Examiner's Office.

If you put your mind to it, I suppose you can accomplish anything.

Jury Duty Again!

And only two years after the last time.

And question #4 on the questionnaire (along with name, address, etc) is "Are you Hispanic?"

Weird.

Monday rapid fire

• Al Gore goes Geothermal
• Dallas Swat (it's a reality TV show apparantly) officer arrested for having sex with prostitute.
• Firefox Tune Up program
  

Double weirdness

• The quest for alternative energy seems to have caused an earthquake. In Switzerland no less. Overall it's cool though.
• The dirty car art gallery - a guy actually does fine artwork on dirty cars. See to believe.
  

The United States of Baseball and Florida

Here are two from Interesting Maps - the United States of Baseball and Florida. Note the White Sox.

Addendum to the Grateful Dead post

I came across this interview with Ann Coulter on JamBands.com, evidently she's quite the fan. Favorite Quote:

Moreover, I really like Deadheads and the whole Dead concert scene: the tailgating, the tie-dye uniforms, the camaraderie – it was like NASCAR for potheads

Most interesting fact

My collection of Dead tapes, by the way, was the reason I heard one of the Linda Tripp tapes before Ken Starr did. Tripp's lawyer obviously needed to hear the tape before turning it over to the prosecutor, but he only had an old 1950's tape player and couldn't get it to work and Ken Starr wanted the tape the next morning. He was terrified he'd hit the wrong button and erase the evidence. In the wee hours of the morning, it occurred him, a Deadhead himself, that he knew one person in D.C. who definitely had a tape machine. So, at around 2 AM, he called me and asked to come over to use my tape deck.

Friday in appreciation, volume III

I was in Chicago last week so I didn't get a chance to do the in appreciation post, but here is this week's.

This week's in appreciation is the Grateful Dead. While I'm not a huge fan of the music (I love Old and in the Way, and the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band is quite good) they stand out as true American icons, especially for artists. Not only did they commit to a style of music and a style of life, they created it first. And seemingly with the attitude that it's better to have a small achievement than a great excuse (to paraphrase Hoffer). They spend 30 years doing what they wanted to do without asking favors or permission. Contrast that to the Live 8 and the Live Earth crowd and they become a marvel.

So, Grateful Dead, you get this week's In Appreciation.

A funny two

I don't usually read the contents of my junk mail folder, but the sender name sounded vaguely familiar so I took a look at it and see

I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here (http://thoseeven.cn) are bad.

And check this out, from the Onion - I didn't realize they had a video news service now. HT: Captain Ed.

How to make Google Earth creepy yet funny

Check this out, From Slate. It starts a bit slow, but watch the whole thing

The Dark Tower

Since I can never find the link easily, here is the Coming Anarchy post on The Ryugong, the Dark Tower of North Korea.

The Jimmy Carter killer rabbit story

Subadei posted about the giant badgers the British have supposedly unleashed on Southern Iraq (and if they haven't, why are they holding back?) and I did a quick search for "Jimmy Carter Rabbit Attack" on Google and it returned 341,000 results! The more notable ones are

• News of the odd
• The Straight Dope
• and of course, Wikipedia
  

History rhymes in funny ways

While perusing coverage of the latest British terror plots, I came across the words "Doctor's" and "plot" in the same sentence. Being morbidly interested in Russian History, I thought of Stalin's final purge, happily stopped by his death, the Doctors' Plot, which is thought to be his pretext for getting rid of Russia's Jews.. I was looking over the Wikepedia entry on the subject and came across this little tidbit

In the course of his career, Stalin became increasingly suspicious towards physicians. In his later years, he refused to be treated by doctors, and would only consult with veterinarians about his health.

Weird!

Friday round up

• A look at where the I-Pod is made, it's pretty much all of East Asia
• A nice look at Electronic Medical Records
• Coming Anarchy does math
• Get your postal mail over the internet! This would solve a lot of problems for me actually.
• 72 year old Marine beats crap out of 27 year old pickpocket.
  

An odd sight

A couple of hours ago I made a caffeine run to a gas station I don't often frequent. There were four old men playing some kind of video poker. They all stared silently at the machines, much the same way my age cohort plays Halo or Guitar Hero.

Doesn't anyone ever outgrow video games? It would be nice if someone actually grew up. Granted, I don't seem to be, but other people should.

Saturday night reading

• CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry - I'm sure they have some sort of ulterior motive in this but it seems like a positive development.
• A private citizen owns part of a Georgia highway - He's not putting up toll booths, which is something I would do. Evidently the state tried to condemn it a while back but didn't do all of the paperwork.
• Robotic farm workers!
• While there is a GTD Outlook plugin, there is not a Vista compatible one, which is a bit ironic.
• Americans still don't trust the government. Wherefore art thou Barry Goldwater? Oh yes, we call you Ron Paul now...
  

Quick Friday roundup while uploading

• Cool new wind turbines
• A good article on insanity and Angela Yates
• Oil from Algae!
• 15 year old performs surgery in India
• The art of the doable to do list
• The greatest sidewalk artist ever
  

The first meaningful, non scandalous news from the Catholic church in a while

From Time.com

Joe Kennedy's First Marriage: Still On
The most controversial "marriage that never was" in recent U.S. political history is back. Sources tell TIME that the Vatican has reversed the annulment of Joseph P. Kennedy II's marriage to Sheila Rauch. The annulment had been granted in secrecy by the Catholic Church after the couple's 1991 no-fault civil divorce. Rauch found out about the de-sanctification of their marriage only in 1996, after Kennedy had been wedded to his former Congressional aide, Beth Kelly, for three years.

The annulment was the subject of Rauch's 1997 book Shattered Faith, which lambasted her ex-husband and was severely critical of the Catholic Church's proceedings, which made the marriage (which had produced twin boys) null and void in the eyes of the church. Rauch argued that Kennedy was able to unilaterally "cancel" nearly 12 years of marriage because of his clan's influence in the church. Kennedy argued at the time that the annulment was the right thing to do in religious terms.

Now that I think about it, it's been a couple of years since any Catholic priest molestation revelations have come to light.

Quick roundup while uploading

• A nice article on the Golden Section in design
• China and Demography from Coming Anarchy
• Making engines more efficient - using steam of all things - very cool
• Cutting Edge Designers
• Prediction Markets - nice graphics
  
• Woman jailed for testicle attack

  Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.
  
  She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out. A friend handed it back to Mr Jones saying: "That's yours."

  
  

Ron Paul on the Colbert Report tonight

It should be an interesting matchup. We'll see if they touch on any of the unpopular things Paul adamantly believes in like abortion, the Gold Standard and his thoughts on the United Nations.

Cool site of the day

The Strange Maps blog - check out this one which juxtaposes foreign counties with US states in terms of GDP. The Tennessee-Saudi Arabia bit is surprising.

The weirdest thing I read last week

From Jim Thompson's novel, Pop. 1280 after the protagonist almost get hanged by an angry mob for rape

I figure sometimes that maybe that's why we don't make as much progress as other parts of the nation. People lose so much time from their jobs in lynching other people, and they spend so much money on rope and kerosene and getting likkered up in advance, and other essentials, that there ain't an awful lot of money or man-hours left for practical purposes.

The food chain takes surprising turns

Watch the whole thing, there's several twists and turns in this.

Sunday link round up

• A creepy collection of suicide notes
• Google used this camera to create their new "Street View" feature (which is not in Atlanta, yet).
• Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin explains why the lessening of racial majorities is a bad thing for diversity. Really.
• There's a new, free version of Refactor! specifically for ASP.net. It's pretty cool. When I installed it it deleted all of my toolbox snippets in Visual Studio, so be careful about that.
  

Thursday link roundup

• Ala. Officials Probe 'Monster Pig' Saga

  State wildlife officials said Wednesday they want to know how the huge hog dubbed "Monster Pig" got into a fenced hunting preserve where it was chased down and shot to death by an 11-year-old boy.
  ...
  weighed 1,051 pounds and measured 9 feet, 4 inches from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail.
  ...
  Jamison was hunting with his father and the guides on May 3 when he killed the giant pig. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50-caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

• Are you a good liar?
• Microsoft Surface
• Popular Mechanics how to videos
  

Quick link round

• Puzzles and Mysteries from ZenPundit
• The Captain America Syndrome at the Washington Monthly. - They don't actually call it that, but that's what they're talking about.
• This seems dirty, but it's mostly medical. Quite funny though.
  
• Yet more Stirling engines
  

Strange and funny

From the Wikipedia entry on Sam Peckinpah

Ray Bradbury tells the story of Peckinpah's long interest in filming Bradbury's novel Something Wicked This Way Comes. When Bradbury asked how Peckinpah intended to shoot it, Peckinpah said he would "rip out the pages and stuff them into the camera." Bradbury sold the rights to another party, and the incensed Peckinpah sent Bradbury a gift: a potted cactus and a jar of Vaseline.

Strange and funny

From the Wikipedia entry on Sam Peckinpah

Ray Bradbury tells the story of Peckinpah's long interest in filming Bradbury's novel Something Wicked This Way Comes. When Bradbury asked how Peckinpah intended to shoot it, Peckinpah said he would "rip out the pages and stuff them into the camera." Bradbury sold the rights to another party, and the incensed Peckinpah sent Bradbury a gift: a potted cactus and a jar of Vaseline.

How does the West expect to win...

When we have judges like this

"The trouble is I don't understand the language. I don't really understand what a Web site is," he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.

Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms "Web site" and "forum." An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: "I haven't quite grasped the concepts."

Interesting bits of knowledge

About evolution in this case

Since records on the subject began in the mid-1800s, the average breast size in the US has increased from a 32-B to the current average of 36-C. This may be a result of better nutrition, healthier lifestyle, or the result of the aforementioned sexual selection.

Wednesday round up

• 5 Techniques for Enhancing Contrast in Digital Photos
• "Breeding dysentery in the ranks" - the best misuses of the English language in the Sopranos
• What journalists need to know about economics - quite good
  

Reason #93,843 for private schools

This is quite weird

Teachers Stage Fake Gun Attack on Kids
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.

The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience and lasted five minutes during the weeklong trip to a state park, said Scales Elementary School Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who led the trip.

"We got together and discussed what we would have done in a real situation," he said.

The Japanese seem to be outdoing us in crazy

Check out the speech below. It takes a certain amount of gravitas to be against majority rule and run for office on the explicit platform of destroying the county, but you just can't hold back street musicians.

Crazy vegans and social evolution

This horrifying article appeared in today's AJC

Vegan parents guilty in infant murder
6-week-old died of starvation after being fed diet of soy milk, apple juice
The parents of a baby that died of starvation after being fed a vegan diet have been found guilty of malice murder, felony murder and first degree cruelty to children.
...
Prosecutors said it was a chilling case of murder by starvation, a painful and prolonged death. Attorneys representing Sanders and Thomas told jurors the first-time parents did the best they could while adhering to their vegan lifestyle. Vegans typically live free of animal products.

It's troubling in many ways; it raises the question of do we need an official (i.e. government) of raising children (no), and how could these two be so stupid as to not notice that their baby was shrinking?

The truly rare thing is how did these two avoid the self-appointed legions of women who see an infant as an invitation to ask the parents questions on every conceivable subject? It's not like you have to seek out child-rearing advice when it comes flying out of the woodwork in public places. I imagine it's decent advice too, just repetitive.

Perhaps it's an evolved behavior. Post-partum depression being common a society with an army of cooing watchdogs is the first line of defense against neglect or abuse.

It's hard to sell domestic violence

While on my way to the Open Mic last night I passed a street performer/near vagrant. As I walked by I got the a pitch for money, with the memorable opening line of "Can you help me out man, I just did six months for domestic violence". I gave him a dose of the evil eye (look at a spot an inch above his eyes, try it, it works) and he backed off rather quickly.

Why would he think that would be a good way to get money out of anyone? Then again, thinking probably isn't a strong suit.

The funniest thing I read today

It comes from the blog of Anderson Cooper, which graces us with

Cameras followed the governor as he shopped for groceries. All he had was $21.00 to spend on food for an entire week. That's the average amount of money allotted to a food stamp recipient. He had to say "no" to organic bananas and Swiss cheese.

Does anyone expect food stamps to be more than just barely adequate (if that)? Is there anyone laboring under the idea that life on food stamps is an excess of luxury, filled with store bought organic foods?

One of the more annoying human tendencies is that everyone would think like we do if only they had access to the same collection of facts. Thomas Sowell put it best with

Facts do not 'speak for themselves.' They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

If you don't convince someone of the flaw in the theory, all of the "awareness" in the world probably one reinforces one's original worldview.

And on the awareness stunts, nothing beats death row inmates going on a hunger strike to protest conditions. How can anyone top that?

Saturday rapid fire

• Thought crime in High School writing class -

  Allen Lee, 18, faces two disorderly conduct charges over the creative-writing assignment, which he was given on Monday in English class at the northern Illinois school.

  Students were told to "write whatever comes to your mind. Do not judge or censor what you are writing," according to a copy of the assignment. This is the first salvo in the education establishments overreaction I suppose.

  I wonder how far it will spread. It's bad enough that 99% of corporate writing is so measured and passive it might as well be written in Latin, now it's going to start even earlier.

• An interesting profile of international arms dealers. This one is worthy of a James Bond villain status.
  
• An Israeli newspaper ranks the US presidential candidates in terms of their willingness to defend Israel. Curiously lacking is the American counterpart to their prime ministers.
  

The weird far right makes an appearance

We haven't seen these people since the last administration

Six arrested in 'militia' weapons raids; nearby school shut
Federal and state agents arrested six men and seized an arsenal of homemade hand grenades and firearms in raids Thursday, including one that forced the shutdown of a school.

The men, members of the self-styled "Alabama Free Militia," had no apparent plans to use the weapons, but the leader was described as a federal fugitive, federal authorities said.

Keeping us safe

This is something to bear in mind as recent events have brought gun control back onto the discussion list

Phony fax gives prisoner almost 2 weeks of freedom
Officials released a prisoner from a state facility after receiving a phony fax that ordered the man be freed, and didn't catch the mistake for nearly two weeks.

Timothy Rouse, 19, is charged with beating an elderly western Kentucky man and was at the Kentucky Correctional & Psychiatric Center in La Grange for a mental evaluation. He was released from that facility on April 6 after officials received the fake court order.

It contained grammatical errors, was not typed on letterhead and was faxed from a local grocery store. The fax falsely claimed that the Kentucky Supreme Court "demanded" Rouse be released.
...
Prison officials did not notice that the fax came from a grocery store because policies did not require checking the source of a faxed order, said Greg Taylor, the LaGrange facility's director.

"It's not part of a routine check, but certainly, in hindsight, that would perhaps have caused somebody to ask a question," he said. He added that misspellings on orders are common.

The most damning part I suppose is that misspellings on Supreme Court "demands" are common.

Even if strict gun control is theoretically possible and desirable, it's got to be administered by someone. And guess who that someone is going to be?

An odd mention

Matt Yglesias asks "How many moody loners are there" in this episode of Blogging Heads.

The old round up

• Digital Camera crop factors
• 20 things not to do when starting a business - I stayed away from most of them
• More solar power
• via Marginal Revolution -

  The public's opinion of past wars improves as a new war approaches. Thus, after Vietnam most people thought the war was a mistake and this held true for decades until the beginning of the Iraq war when the opinion of war in Vietnam suddenly improved! Even more dramatically, a majority of people thought that World War I was a mistake until World War II approached when the percentage thinking it was a good war doubled.
  

• The worst school murders actually happened in 1927, though it did not involve shootings. It's a horrifying story.
  

Best headline of the year so far

From the Grand Rapids Press: Snow won't dampen global-warming rallies

Friday round up

• Crime Crews
• Where the Fortune 50 CEOs went to college - appearances by Georgia State and Georgia Tech, surprisingly little Ivy League.
  
• Government menstrual forms, really, to quote

  Women officers must write down their "detailed menstrual history and history of LMP [last menstrual period] including date of last confinement [maternity leave]," the form says.

  I like the use of the term "confinement" for maternity leave.
• Solar Power - I was wondering why companies like this didn't already exist. Essentially they install (and own) solar panels on top of your house, and you buy it from them them at the rate you're paying the power company. I met them yesterday at the Home Show at the World Congress Center. A good idea.
  

Quick Tuesday rapid fire

• Prominent 30s fascist sympathizer was actually black! Favorite quote: "One could perform whiteness to some degree, and that is precisely what Dennis did"
• The best author's site ever
• Real Estate Photography - As I'm doing some light house hunting at the moment, I can definitely say that most online real estate listings are horrible.
• Chet Richards interview
  

Tuesday round up

• Popular mechanics and 100 mpg cars
• Couple Fights for Baby 'Metallica' Name
  

  In Sweden, parents must get the names of their children approved by the tax authority, which is in charge of the population registry and issues personal identification numbers, similar to Social Security numbers in the United States.

• Billy Joe Shaver seems to have shot someone.
  

Quck roundup

• An interesting look at the military aspects of social networking.
• Underwater windmills
• How we would fight China
• The metaweb/FreeBase
• Evidently February was cold
  
• Blurb has dropped their prices.
• Strangest suicide attempt, ever

  Two Georgia men survived a gruesome suicide attempt Friday after cutting their own arms off with a saw, reported Atlanta's Journal Constitution.
  
  The 40 and 41-year-old men managed to remove three of their four arms, cutting them about six inches above their wrists, Atlanta Police Major Lane Hagin told the Journal.

• Baby steps to a better editorial, it's easier to see why this one is so wrong.
• The 20 best comic book weapons.
• It's odd seeing this already existing - I stumbled across this C.S. Lewis quote yesterday "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' which is the general gist my future novel The Comedian.
  

Back up

I'm back from being without the internet all day, oh how I missed it. To celebrate, check out the Frank Zappa statue in Vilnius Lithuania. (via Coming Anarchy)

Beat this for raw weirdness

'12-year-old' is 29-year-old sex offender

Stiffler and Robert James Snow, 43, "were very upset when the detectives told them they had been having a sexual relationship with a 29-year-old man and not a pre-teen boy," Quayle said.

I think the next step is raining frogs. We live in a very strange world. I'm going to put on my tin foil hat now.

Three items of interest

• The UltraMarathon Man
• David Lee Roth Doing Bluegrass - sort of disturbing
• Not disturbing is Norman Blake in a rare YouTube appearance
  

Quick round up to clear off some firefox tabs

• An interesting Interface
• Why Hawks Win - an interesting article
• A good deal on health insurance
• Dashboard Mohamed - I'm not that brave myself....
• ASP.net AJAX Cheatsheets
• The lives of the first web builders, in wacky Canadian form.
  

Apocalyptic reading for the Tech Crowd

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth

That's the fiction reading of the new year - for the disturbing nonfiction reading check out North Carolina Woman Charged With Malicious Castration After Attacking Man's Genitals. It's disturbing mostly in that there are other kinds of castration in North Carolina.

Apparantly America is at the point

Where we have 3 week long, 24/7, watergun assassination tournaments. Life is interesting.

One liners and things that caught my eye

• Good one liner -

  If there is a motto for the Bush Administration’s war policy, it is, “Doing the Right Thing Wrongly.”

  The argument on the neo-right these days resembles the 30s debates between Stalinist and Trotskyist on the nature of communism, i.e. can one separate the theory and practice.
• The nature of motion sickness
• From an article about the Skyhook (sort of a reverse parachute) -

  The first live test was conducted with a pig as the target. Due to some stability issues, the pig spun in the 125 mph wind, and arrived on the plane dizzy and discombobulated. It recovered, however, and promptly attacked the crew.

Very sad

Tech journalist James Kim and his family are missing. He was one of the main reviewers from the old TechTV days, lately he's been at CNet.

Of morbid interest

How hangings work, from Slate. I would require a drop of 5’ 1” by the 1892 rules, but a drop of 6’ 1” by the 1913 rules.

The "Drop Tables" are here.

Quick rapid fire

I hope to have my election predictions tommorow, but in the meantime...

• Robotic sentry that shoots real bullets
• Mapped Up - good idea, good execution
• This is a fine epitaph
• Whipping therapy cures depression and suicide crises

  The professor used the self-flagellation method to cure his own depression; he also recovered from two heart attacks with the help of physical tortures too.

  Only the Russians would come up with this. Actually this would explain the flaggelants of the middle ages, as well as the Puritans scourging themselves.
• Victim's cousin charged with tattooing killer
  

The funniest thing I read today - Monday edition

From the Navy Seal recruitment page

The SEAL program consists of more than 12 months — followed by an additional 18 months — of intensive training designed to push you to your physical and mental limits — again and again

More than 12 months, followed by 18 months?

Still uploading

Pesky large files. Anyway, here is some lovely reading material for you.

• This is the strangest article you will read this week. By a lot.
• Profanity across languages- the Dutch "May you get the measles" is my favorite
• Deadweight Loss / Excess Burden - if more people understood this, the world would be improved remarkably. Short version, it's a cost to someone with no benefit to anyone.
• Human Powered Vehicles - a bike that goes over 40 miles per hour

The three funniest things I've read today

Both arise from this post by Althouse, entitled Wisconsin, the necrophiliac's playground.

Surprisingly necrophilia is not illegal in Wisconsin. One of the comments is

You're just jealous because you're not dead.

I read the two articles linked, the first of which yielded this gem

Authorities said the three were not acquainted with the woman but had seen an obituary with her photo.

which makes me think they were holding out for a hot corpse.

The other was

Radke said Grunke asked him to help because he wanted to dig up Tennessen's body for sex, the court documents said, and the three had stopped at a store on the way to the cemetery to buy condoms.

Condoms? One would think the necrophiliac crowd would be a bit more devil may care about such matters.

Weekend photos

Lake boats, super-gluing my fingers together, who knows what else could have happened this weekend.

My index finger and thumb have been soaking in warm soapy water for about an hour at this point.


The lake at Stone Mountain

Quick Sunday rapid fire

• An hourly motel in the sky, more info here.
• The funniest quote I read yesterday is from this blog, to wit

  Every adult must at some point have paused during some slapstick piece of debauchery and thought, "Christ, this is ridiculous". Having testicles is like being chained to the village idiot. Sad, but there it is.

• The famous "What year is it?" essay. What year you compare our modern times to determines your current outlook, pretty interesting. Personally I think it's 1905, and Radical Islam is best compared to the Bolshevism of that period, but all comparisons are, by definition, imperfect.
• The Seventh Seal was an incredible movie
• This is an incredibly cool time lapse movie, regrettably, in QuickTime, but still good.
  

Wow

Police: Nurse, 51, kills intruder with bare hands

Tuesday rapid fire

I'm back from Kentucky, I'll have a recap of that soon, in the meantime, here are some interesting links

• Harry Anderson and New Orleans
• An underappreciated man of all time
• Ranking Blogs as newspapers
• Radio Shack fires 400 people by email
• Offshore wind mills - seems pretty cool
• Man Lives to 112 Despite Junk-Food Diet
• This was the funniest SNL skit of all time, surprisingly it's not on YouTube
• Another good skit is, specifically, Seinfeld meets Oz.
• A seemingly major oil discovery. Probably not as big a deal as everyone thinks it is, but then again, maybe not.
  

Funny

Via Marginal Revolution

Chinese officials have decided to crack down on the practice at some rural villages of hiring strippers to perform at funerals. The practice is intended to attract more attendees to funerals because many people believe that a greater number of people improve the deceased’s chances for better afterlife.

The funniest thing I read today

From this article

Cook County prosecutors say a 29-year-old man traveling with his mother desperately didn't want her to know he'd packed a sexual aid for their trip to Turkey.

So he told security it was a bomb, officials said.

Tuesday round up

• External GPS camera mount - it looks kind of tricky, but cool nonetheless.
• A Meditation On the Speed Limit - large scale annoyances by UGA students are probably a sign of increasing value to the UGA degree.
• The uses of anti-semitism
• Cool noir photography from Mr Riddles on Flickr
• A blogging conference I might actually attend. Why are none of these in Atlanta?
• C# bar code generator
• An interesting article on archetypes
• The decline of Western civilization, part 938.
  

Sunday night round up

• Vile behavior from the bench
• Interesting thoughts on Hezbollah
• One off furniture
• Ipod photoshop style
• Bashing Al Gore
• Scary police impersonators
• Product photography
• Cool bike photos
• The right wing look at the NY Times. This is the only worthwhile thing to appear on the Huffington Post so far.
• An apt cartoon
  

Monday rapid fire

• The best use of graphic thumbnails I've seen
• Calculate your Body Mass Index. This seems a tad unrealistic, and if this is what people are using to measure America's obesity "Epidemic" I'm much less impressed. It seems over broad and crappy. For instance, my ideal weight range is between 137 and 183, a difference of 46 pounds.
• Stirling Engines!
• Kurdistan, the other Iraq, it's where all of the American troops will be should a full fledged civil war break out. Described my Michael Totten as "a Muslim Utah". Shoul Iraq break up, this will be the country we subsidize most, besides Israel.
  
• $10 Panoramic Tripod Head - I need one of these.
  
• Apex Predators
• How much is inside....
• Cheap Handlebar mounts - something else I need.
• Milton Friedman TV!
  

A horrible dream

Last night I had a dream where I went back to work in corporate America. It was truly horrible, oceans of cubicles, schedules and faceless (literally in the dream) drones. How does anyone stand it? It was much like my time at CMD.

A circle of hell appears at Turner field

I came across this somehow

A Guinness World Record-Setting Event for Banjo Players!
...
We plan to bring together the most number of banjo players assembled at one location to play the same song at the same time.
...
All banjo players are welcome to attend. Only those who can demonstrate the ability to play the song Foggy Mountain Breakdown for 5 minutes will be counted toward the Guinness World Record. The tempo will be 120 beats per minute, and we'll play in the key of G.
...
We'll stand together on the field in small teams, according to the type of instrument played and the style of play.

That's a whole lot of banjo. I have all the usual bluegrass prejudices against the banjo I suppose.