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Hookers for the handicapped
No, really it’s true. Be glad you don’t pay taxes in Denmark.
The Danish government is under attack for paying for its disabled citizens to have sex with prostitutes.
The official ‘Sex, irrespective of disability’ campaign pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.
The legal guidelines advise: “It could be of great importance that the carer speaks to the prostitute together with the person in their care, to help them express their wishes.”
Via the Kaus of Slate
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Well put
From Reason’s interview with NYT columnist John Tierney
I find it ironic that after half a century of the golden age of urban planning, people all want to live in neighborhoods that were built before thenÂthat the planners are now trying to recreate. They were built by private developers and private streetcar companies, and the market guided it. I’ve heard it argued that urban planning is one area where the market really doesn’t work that well, that you find in great cities that there was a lot of central planning of the street grids. I’d like to know more. You obviously need someone to set some rules, but I still tend to think that the really successful cities and neighborhoods are the ones where there’s a lot of trial and error, people trying things on their own.
Which brings to mind the programming definition of creationism
The (false) belief that large, innovative software designs can be completely specified in advance and then painlessly magicked out of the void by the normal efforts of a team of normally talented programmers. In fact, experience has shown repeatedly that good designs arise only from evolutionary, exploratory interaction between one (or at most a small handful of) exceptionally able designer(s) and an active user population — and that the first try at a big new idea is always wrong.
It’s annoying that the current design v evolution debate consists of spastic posturing, it’s really an interesting topic.
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Thursday rapid fire
- Bush Urges End of Trade Tariffs, Subsidies – this would actually be a legacy worth remembering, and probably the first “Conservative” thing he’s done (with the exception of the tax cuts) since becoming president.
- You Don’t Save What You Don’t Own – a nice summation of the bus thing in NOLA
- Trial Of The Century: Keillor V. MNspeak.com – Someone else approximately shares my feelings about Garrison Keilor
- Via the Agitator
From Colby Cosh…if I can’t have a libertarian paradise where state power defers to social power, or use recent events to urge others to the wisdom of such a state of affairs, I’m willing to propose a second-best for America: replace the three branches of republican government with permanent joint rule by Wal-Mart and the Salvation Army. Go on, tell me you could honestly do worse.
- I can’t find a link to this anywhere, but Commie-Rocker Steve Earle sold one of his songs to be used in a truck commercial. It was quite the talk of the DBT email list (which I still read periodically)
- Since we don’t hear anything about hurricane relief in Alabama and Mississippi can we assume that state and local government did their jobs there?
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Katrina satellite photos
Google Maps has satellite photos of New Orleans from Aug 31 of this year.
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Vile
Amid Katrina Chaos, Congressman Used National Guard to Visit Home
This same guy is under investigation by the FBI as well. The shamelessness of some people is without peer. Makes you wonder how much of the upcoming billions of dollars to be spent on relief is going to swallowed in outright fraud. 30% is always a safe assumption, but in the case of NOLA you have to wonder how high that percentage is going to go.
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An amazing conflict of interest
Family of Red Sox fan sues gun maker
In May, the city of Boston settled a lawsuit by Snelgrove’s family for $5 million. As part of the settlement, the city cooperated in the suit against the gun maker and will receive half of any damage award, up to $2 million.
Is it me, or switching sides like that a monumental conflict of interests?
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Things that currently annoy me
- Ebay is having some sort of malfunction with one of their DNS servers and I can’t up a bid on a cool tripod
- This article
An air purifier helped suck up some of the errant smoke, but not all of it. Newly pregnant, Kump began thinking about a story told to her by a pregnant co-worker at the Tides: After her first visit to her obstetrician, the doctor was convinced that Kump’s co-worker was a smoker, when in fact she had never touched a cigarette in her life.
Kump began eyeing those ashtrays more perilously, concerned about her exposure to secondhand smoke and the consequences to her health and that of her unborn child.
It actually uses an unnamed friend of someone as a source, and it uses the phrase “began eyeing those ashtrays more perilously”? Have these people no respect for the English language?
- This article “Katrina raises Hillary Clinton’s profile” in the Houston Chronicle. It contains 11 paragraphs and 11 sentences.
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Low expectations
From the article Palestinians Celebrate Freedom in Gaza
Palestinians torched empty synagogues in the Morag, Kfar Darom and Netzarim settlements, as well as a Jewish seminary in Neve Dekalim. Later, a Palestinian bulldozer knocked down the walls of the Netzarim synagogue.
In Netzarim, two young Palestinians waving flags stomped on the smoldering debris outside the synagogue, and others took turns hitting the building with a large hammer.
“They (Israelis) destroyed our homes and our mosques. Today it is our turn to destroy theirs,” said a man in Neve Dekalim who gave his name only as Abu Ahmed.
Israel removed some 8,500 Gaza settlers from their homes in 21 settlements last month, and razed homes and most buildings in the communities. However, the Israeli Cabinet decided Sunday to leave 19 synagogue buildings intact, drawing complaints from the Palestinians and criticism from the United States.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Israeli decision “puts the Palestinian Authority into a situation where it may be criticized for whatever it does.”
So this behavior was expected and excused before the fact.
As Tom Palmer remarked about Chechnya, what do you do when it’s too late to do the right thing?
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Althouse says it better
When did you stop watching “The Daily Show”?
This week’s show, the first post-Katrina coverage, has been just blatantly telegraphing from the very first moment that the whole point of the show is to slam Bush. I’m upset about the hurricane and find it very off-putting to see political ideologues salivating over a chance to get Bush over this. I’m not even sure that’s what the show goes on to do. I just can’t bear to watch it. Instinctively, I don’t want to watch.
I’ve found that I mostly Tivo through most of it to get to some of the interviews and sketches. It’s also a bit strange that they’ve cut down on the sketches (they’ve gone from every episode to less than half) in favor of Stewart holding forth on some topic or another.
To quote Greg Geraldo on the late and lamented Tough Crowd
Most comics, they just go for the laugh, but you, you like to tell a story….
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Sunday rapid fire
- Big Lebowski Fest – I peruse Wikipedia trying to find the population of Louisville and find their entry on the annual Big Lebowski festival.
- A fine post by Dave Kopel on the current gun grabbing in New Orleans.
- And would you believe that a Hot Brown isn’t a term for some vile act?