February, 2007 archive

I don’t think so, unless you start to sound like a Philadephian via Virginia and Delaware. And I never ever have said, “youse.”

Any Philadelphians who know me care to comment?

Your turn.

Via Phillybits.

Don’t call the cops in Radnor, Pa. A private detective at $150 an hour would be cheaper:

Shantel West thought she got off easy when it cost $80 to repair her 2004 Pontiac Grand Prix after a fender-bender in Radnor Township last spring – until she got a $715.08 bill for the three police officers who responded to her 911 call.

In April, Radnor enacted an ordinance requiring non-residents to pay for police services at traffic accidents. Since then, the township has been inundated with complaints that the collection agency overstepped its bounds and that Radnor police lied to motorists about having to pay the bills.

They’ll just make you sicker:

US immigration officials insisted the sufferer of an anal infection remove a small piece of medical thread which was being used by doctors to treat the condition. The man required treatment under general anaesthetic as a result.

So, thanks to TSA, an honest traveller had to go under the knife.

Is TSA employing buffoons or what?

Bill Gates:

Improved technology and design alone will not be enough to keep Windows Vista and Office 2007 users safe from hackers and identity thieves, according to Bill Gates.

The industry must find ways to protect users from themselves in a world where people and business connect more devices, and where more business is done online.

Hmmmm.

You don’t hear comments like this from Patrick Volkerding.

Because they aren’t relevant unless you use Windows.

Via Huffington Post:

Legislation will be introduced in Albany on Wednesday to lay a $100 fine on pedestrians succumbing to what State Sen. Carl Kruger calls iPod oblivion.

“We’re talking about people walking sort of tuned in and in the process of being tuned in, tuned out,” Kruger said. “Tuned out to the world around them. They’re walking into speeding cars. They’re walking into buses. They’re walking into one another and it’s creating a number of fatalities that have been documented right here in the city.”

I sometimes wonder about persons who always have their little speakers stuck in their little ears. They miss so much of the world around them.

I haven’t seen any statistics that indicate that the those same speakers help to keep drivers from missing them. If anyone has any statistics, let me know.

But distractions can certainly be an issue.

I recently took my defensive driving refresher (that insurance discount is well worth three hours every three years). The instructor told us that there had been at least one car crash in Delaware in which the driver who caused the crash was TEXT-MESSAGING her daughter on her cell phone at the time of the crash (not to mention the many when the drivers were yakking on their cell phones).

Somehow, it’s difficult for me to see a pedestrian’s iPodding as being in the same class as that.

Thoughts?

(Aside) Delaware is slowing moving towards prohibiting cell phone use while driving.

Dick Polman:

No doubt it can be argued that what happened last night in the Senate chamber was actually more complicated than what I have just described. Senate rules provide the minority party with ample opportunities to gum up the works (as the Democrats well know, having taken full advantage in recent years, by blocking Bush judicial nominees), and now it’s the GOP that is jerking those parliamentary levers.

Republicans can claim that they really aren’t trying to stop the Senate from debating, and even passing, a resolution that would essentially be a no-confidence verdict on Bush. They can claim that they’re really not intending to muzzle the aforementioned Warner resolution, which seeks to put the Senate on record in opposition to the so-called Bush Surge. They can claim (as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell put it last night) that “we’re not trying to stop this debate. We’re trying to structure it.”

They can claim that the majority Democrats are being unreasonable by refusing to agree with a GOP suggestion that any resolution should require 60 of the 100 votes for passage (the filibuster-proof margin), rather than a simple 51-49 majority. They can claim that the Democrats are being unreasonable by refusing to allow the GOP to offer several Bush-supportive resolutions, including one that simply states that all troop activity in Iraq should be fully funded. They can claim that this Democratic intransigence has left them no alternative – which is why, in last night’s ultimate parliamentary action, they managed to prevent the chamber from even starting the debate over the Warner resolution.

And how did they do that? By exercising their minority rights. By stopping the Senate from proceeding with its intended business. Under Senate rules, there’s only one way to defeat such a stalling tactic: round up 60 votes. But last night the Democrats couldn’t get 60 votes. They got only 49 – a majority of those who voted, but not nearly good enough.

So the Senate’s attempt to take a more active role in Iraq policy was over before it even began.

Again, the GOP was within its rights to game the system, because Senate rules virtually invite it. But the claims invoked by Bush’s Capitol Hill loyalists have only a surface plausibility. It has been well reported that the Bush White House has repeatedly conferred with Senate Republican leaders on parliamentary strategy. It has been well reported that the Bush White House is intensely focused on derailing the Warner resolution and halting (or at least diluting) a no-confidence vote on Bush. The administration understands the symbolic power of such a resolution, especially since Senator John Warner has such strong pro-military credentials.

And the people all sing.

And, indeed, it will come, when the hacks and the warmongers are gone.

As they will be.

For, over the centuries, the American people have demonstrated that, despite occasional forays into wierdness, they will eventually come to their senses and KICK LYING BASTARDS those who have difficulty with the truth TO THE SIDE.

Going down: Picher, Oklahoma, where the guvmint is buying out all the residents.

The culprits of Picher’s demise are the same lead and zinc mines that brought the town its prosperity and boosted its population to a high of 16,000 before World War II. But the mines shut down in the 1970s, and all that is left in and around Picher are about 1,000 people and giant gray piles of mining waste, known locally as “chat,” some hundreds of feet tall and acres wide.

(No word on what happened to the mining companies who built and simultaneously destroyed Picher–they may be long gone).

Going up: Houses along the Neshaminy Creek (Check out the slideshow), where the guvmint is paying to raise houses onto stilts because of flooding:

For flood-battered property owners who want to keep living in high-risk flood zones, elevating homes on stilts or towering foundations is an increasingly popular option. However, the process can take months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the result might look weird. Above all, though, the wisdom of elevation as a flood-mitigation strategy is debatable.

I’m not sure how I feel about this latter story. On one hand, the flooding didn’t used to be so bad, not until the better part of Bucks County got paved over, exacerbating the flooding. On the other hand, why should we, the taxpayers, pay for persons to stay in harms way? I sort of would rather see my taxes go to educate some child out of poverty.

Yes, the same reasoning could extend to New Orleans. The incompetence of the Corps of Engineers is a separate issue from the wisdom of living eight feet below sea level next to a major river.

Yale.

SkIvy League.

Must have been Throat-Mobile:

A jury convicted a man of second-degree domestic assault on Saturday for shoving a cell phone down his girlfriend’s throat.

Prosecutors said Marlon Brando Gill, 25, of Kansas City, forced the cell phone into Melinda Abell’s mouth during an argument in December 2005. Gill denied the charge, claiming that she tried to swallow the phone to prevent him from finding out whom she had been calling.

How bizarre is this?

Paris Hilton is going after the website that is displaying possessions she forgot to reclaim from a storage lockup, saying she was “appalled” her personal items were being exploited for commercial gain.

As if she had any “personal items” left.

It can be a shocking experience:

A Ohio high school student who decided it was a “good idea” to strip naked, anoint himself with grapeseed oil and “run amok” in the school’s canteen earned himself a double tasering for his trouble, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

(snip)

School resource officer Doug Staysniak then joined the pursuit, ordering the slippery streaker to stop. Killian declined, and when he “ran toward a group of students huddled in a corner”, Staysniak let him have it with both prongs. Killian then tried to stand up, which attracted a second blast of juice.

He was subsequently cuffed, whisked to hospital to have the taser prongs excised, then “booked and taken to the Delaware County jail” on “inducing panic, public indecency, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct” raps.

Unlucky at cards . . .

A Murmansk gambler lost his wife in a poker game when he ran out of cash and laid his other half on the table, Ananova reports.

Unfortunately for Andrei Karpov, when winning opponent Sergey Brodov arrived to claim his prize, his wife Tatiana was “so angry” she opted for a divorce.

She thundered: “It was humiliating and I was utterly ashamed. But as soon as my ex-husband did that I knew I had to leave him.”

In a heartwarming twist which disproves once-and-for-all the old “lucky at cards, unlucky at love” proverb, Tatiana started a relationship with Brodov and subsequently married him.

Just like the old vistas.

One of the wonderfully liberating things about using Linux is that what’s happening in the world of Windows just doesn’t matter any more. Spyware, Adware, Spybots, no longer an issue when using an OS that, from the git-go in 1993, was designed with security in mind.

So one can just buckle down and enjoy the computing experience.

But for those of you who like messing with such stuff, El Reg summarizes this week’s launch of Vista, aka Windows NT 6.0.

Be sure to check out this link in the story.

Check this out:

Farmland Friends [in Indiana] on Friday joined churches nationwide in abruptly canceling its Super Bowl party for fear of violating a federal copyright law that prohibits public venues from showing NFL games on big-screen TVs.

(snippage)

Under NFL guidelines — and federal law — churches, schools and other public venues can hold football-viewing parties only if they use a single, living-room-size TV, no bigger than 55 inches.

With a tip to Atrios.

Whenever it fails, it claims that the authors of the failures are not true conservatives.

Have their cake and eat it too.

Well, I haven’t been posting about it, but Phillybits is sure having fun with Boston’s inability to tell the difference between Lite-Brite and danger.

Check this out.

And this.

With a tip to Brendan.

’nuff said: