Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window - Steve Wozniak

Monday, March 31, 2008

China has discovered that tobacco is evil.

Beijing is to ban smoking in most public places from May 1 as part of its efforts to improve the city ahead of the Olympics, state media reported on Monday.
Lighting up in the Chinese capital will be prohibited in all restaurants, offices and schools, becoming the first city in China to have such a comprehensive ban, the China Daily reported.

Hotels must also have rooms for non-smokers, but the proportion is still being discussed, a tobacco control expert involved in drafting the new rule told the paper.

Bars, meanwhile, will be required to clearly separate smoking from non-smoking areas, according to the newspaper.

Institutions that fail to comply face fines of up to 5,000 yuan (700 dollars), and there are proposals to fine individuals up to 200 yuan although this has not been decided yet, the China Daily said.

Beijing authorities had announced in January that there would be a ban, but Monday’s report was the first time a start date had been announced.

This is one area where I wish China wouldn’t try to be more like us. I guess this means it’ll be easier to breathe in the smog.

Update by Lee: You can read my take on this story here and here.

Oh, jeeze. Is nothing sacred?

News has leaked out from the folks at Muppet central (The Jim Henson Company) that the next Muppet feature film will sport a story line that attacks oil companies. According to CHUD.com, the story will center around all our favorite Muppets producing a show to raise money to save their old theater. They need the money, of course, because an “evil character” is trying to buy the building so that he might tear it down to “get at the oil underneath.”

Why is it we have to turn everything into an anti-capitalism, anti-oil hatefest?

Even more alarming is the fact that it seems that the writer/director team pegged to head the project will be Jason Segel and Nick Stoller, the team that recently gave us the very R rated “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” One wonders if the Muppets will go from kid friendly to edgie and R rated? (I must admit that I would doubt the owners of the Muppet property would do that to their long standing kid friendly product, though.)

Jim Henson may have been an old hippy, but would he have pulled stuff like this? The orignal Muppet movies were good because they were fun to watch. What’s next-the Cookie Monster becoming a vegetarian?

So much for conspiracy theories:

After six months of sensational testimony, the inquest into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, began its final phase on Monday, with the coroner’s using his summation to dismiss any conspiracy theories involving the royal family or secret service in her death and to rebuke their relentless, deep-pocketed accuser, Mohamed al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods department store.

The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, said there was nothing to support allegations that Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II, “ordered Diana’s execution,” nor that Britain’s secret intelligence service, MI6, or any other government agency played any part in the 1997 car crash that killed her and her lover, Mr. Fayed’s son Dodi.

“There is no evidence that the Duke of Edinburgh ordered Diana’s execution, and there is no evidence that the secret intelligence service or any other government agency organized it,” he said. The five possible verdicts he outlined available to the 11-member jury included unlawful killing through “the gross negligence” of the driver, Henri Paul, and “grossly negligent driving” by the paparazzi pursuing the couple. But, he added, “It is not open to you to find that Diana and Dodi were unlawfully killed in a staged accident.”

With British taxpayers’ costs for the inquest having passed $6 million, on top of at least twice that spent on inquiries of the crash by the British and French authorities, the coroner’s summing-up appeared to bring the case full circle, back to facts that were known within weeks, or days, of the crash: that Diana and Dodi al-Fayed died when their Mercedes-Benz, driven at high speed by Mr. Paul, who was drunk and trying to outpace the paparazzi, crashed head-on into a concrete pillar in a tunnel under the Pont de l’Alma in Paris in the early hours of Aug. 31, 1997.

I am Hal’s complete lack of surprise.  The problem with a conspiracy is not keeping little bitty pieces of evidence out of the hands of the public.  It’s keeping the dozens or thousands of co-conspirators quiet.

The coroner’s remarks amounted to a fresh repudiation for Mr. Fayed, an Egyptian-born immigrant whose bridling resentments as an outsider in the cloistered world of Britain’s overclass have made him a thorn in the establishment’s side ever since his controversial purchase of Harrods in 1985. His bitterness, based in part on the repeated rejection of his application for citizenship, formed the crucible for his insistence that Diana and his son were killed on Prince Philip’s orders.

The coroner cited one instance in particular that he said raised questions about Mr. Fayed’s truthfulness: Mr. Fayed’s claim that the couple had telephoned him an hour before the crash to tell him that she was pregnant and that they planned to announce their engagement within days. A French pathologist testified that she found no sign that Diana was pregnant, and close friends of the princess, appearing as witnesses, said she had told them that she was still in love with a previous suitor, the Pakistani-born heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, and had no intention of marrying the younger Mr. Fayed.

Disavowing a pledge made during his own testimony, when he vowed to accept whatever verdict the inquest reached, Mr. Fayed was incensed. “It’s terrible,” he said. “It’s all biased.”

That’s the truly wonderful thing about conspiracy theories.  They are a variant of religious fundamentalism.  No matter how much evidence contradicts your wild ideas, you can always just expand the conspiracy.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to meet with the other astronomers to figure out how we are going to conceal the evidence supporting Genesis.

I wonder if this assclown was ever a Clinton campaign donor.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A Defense Department analyst pleaded guilty Monday to delivering classified information about U.S. and Taiwanese military communications systems to a Louisiana businessman working with the Chinese government.

Gregg Bergersen, 51, of Alexandria, a weapons analyst at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency who held top secret security clearances, was arrested last month. Prosecutors alleged he divulged military secrets to a New Orleans furniture salesman, Tai Kuo, who turned over the information to communist China.

In a plea hearing Monday, Bergersen pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiring to communicate national defense information to a person not entitled to receive it. He faces up to 10 years in prison when sentenced on June 20.

According to a statement of facts, Bergersen received thousands of dollars in cash from Kuo since March 2007, including $3,000 in cash for playing poker during an April 2007 gambling trip to Las Vegas. The document also states that Bergersen thought that Kuo was closely affiliated with the Taiwan Ministry of Defense. He was unaware though that Kuo also maintained contact with a foreign official from Beijing, to whom Kuo was relaying the information.

An FBI affidavit filed last month spelled out detailed evidence against Kuo, including taped conversations in which Bergersen acknowledged to Kuo that he could go to jail for his actions.

The affidavit says that Kuo provided gambling money and show tickets on trips to Las Vegas and in at least one instance caught on videotape, gave Bergersen a half-inch thick stack of folded cash, with a $100 bill on the outside.

Kuo and a third defendant, Chinese national Yu Xin Kang, 33, face more serious charges that carry a possible life sentence. Both are in jail awaiting trial.

Confucious say, man who gamble with both secrets and money must be prepared to face twenty five to life if caught.

Does this mean that Bruce Willis defied the Will of God?

A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.

The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700 B.C. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.

He referred to the asteroid as a “white stone bowl approaching” and recorded it as it “vigorously swept along.”

"And Lo, Ben Affleck was indeed turned into a pillar of salt...” If only.

"Please select mode of death.”

One press of a button and you can end your life with a swift injection of potassium chloride. That is the boast of Roger Kusch, once one of Germany’s most promising conservative politicians and now the improbable promoter of a mercy-killing machine.

If the “Perfusor”, designed to sidestep strict laws banning assisted suicide, goes into production then Germany rather than Switzerland could soon become the destination of choice for those seeking to kill themselves.

Some 700 patients, including several terminally ill Britons, have travelled to Zurich where the self-help organisation Dignitas arranges suicide. Assisted suicide has been legal in Switzerland since 1942 providing a doctor has been consulted and the patient is aware of the consequences of his decision.

It’s Germany’s favorite suicide booth since 2008…

I sincerely hope they’re not serious.

A senior official at one of the Scandinavian central banks told The Daily Telegraph that Fed strategists had stepped up contacts to learn how Norway, Sweden and Finland managed their traumatic crisis from 1991 to 1993, which brought the region’s economy to its knees.

It is understood that Fed vice-chairman Don Kohn remains very concerned by the depth of the US crisis and is eyeing the Nordic approach for contingency options.

Scandinavia’s bank rescue proved successful and is now a model for central bankers, unlike Japan’s drawn-out response, where ailing banks were propped up in a half-public limbo for years.

Wow. Even FDR never went this far. Remember, this is all happening under a supposedly Republican administration.

Lest anyone think we here at Right-Thinking have gone totally ga-ga over Obama, a reminder that he’s still not perfect when it comes to former rivals.

In the days after John Edwards’s withdrawal from the Democratic race, the political world expected his endorsement of Barack Obama would be forthcoming tout de suite. The neo-populist and the hopemonger had spent months tag-teaming Hillary Clinton, pillorying her as a creature of the status quo, not a champion of the kind of “big change” they both deem essential. So appalled was Edwards at Clinton’s gaudy corporatism—her defense of the role of lobbyists, her suckling at the teats of the pharmaceutical and defense industries—that he’d essentially called her corrupt. And then, not least, there were the sentiments of his wife. “Elizabeth hasn’t always been crazy about Mrs. Clinton” is how an Edwards insider puts it; a less delicate member of HRC’s circle says, “Elizabeth hates her guts.”

But now two months have passed since Edwards dropped out—tempus fugit!—and still no endorsement. Why? According to a Democratic strategist unaligned with any campaign but with knowledge of the situation gleaned from all three camps, the answer is simple: Obama blew it. Speaking to Edwards on the day he exited the race, Obama came across as glib and aloof. His response to Edwards’s imprecations that he make poverty a central part of his agenda was shallow, perfunctory, pat. Clinton, by contrast, engaged Edwards in a lengthy policy discussion. Her affect was solicitous and respectful. When Clinton met Edwards face-to-face in North Carolina ten days later, her approach continued to impress; she even made headway with Elizabeth. Whereas in his Edwards sit-down, Obama dug himself in deeper, getting into a fight with Elizabeth about health care, insisting that his plan is universal (a position she considers a crock), high-handedly criticizing Clinton’s plan (and by extension Edwards’s) for its insurance mandate.

Obama will still most likely get the nomination. But if he wants to stay on message and keep being positive, he would do well to reach out to someone like Edwards, who is still a major player in the Democratic Party and someone with whom he would have to work as President. Maybe being more high-minded and less high-handed would be a good idea at this point.

An update on Noosegate:

March 31, 2008—A Manhattan grand jury has subpoenaed the university records of the controversial black Columbia Teachers College professor who found a noose hanging from her office door - signaling that the investigation is broadening to examine possible links between the teacher, her closest friends and the racially charged incident, The Post has learned.

According to sources, the subpoenas obtained recently by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force and prosecutors demanded the college hand over a laundry list of records pertaining to embattled professor Madonna Constantine, whose colleague found a 4-foot hangman’s noose on her office doorknob last October.

The incident happened at the height of the school’s probe of plagiarism charges against her.

Last month, Teachers College announced that Constantine was responsible for two dozen incidents of stealing the work of a faculty member and two students under her tutelage, including lifting passages from their dissertations and hijacking their ideas. Constantine has denied the charge.

Note to liberals: If you want to set yourselves up, make sure you have a more credible “Victim.”

This is fucking great:

Flying Spaghetti Monster statue at Tennessee courthouse

There, as I discovered today on Laughing Squid, some members of the local chapter of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have gotten city approval to erect a statue of “His Noodly Appendage” outside the local courthouse.

I talked briefly by phone Monday with Ariel Safdie, one of the local chapter members involved with building and installing the statue, and she said that for her and her fellow members, the issue involved in building the statue and seeking and acquiring approval to install it wasn’t about religion, but about freedom of speech.

That seems perfectly appropriate to me, since the whole point of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is to make the point--via free speech--that if communities are going to give credence to one theory of the origins of life in their schools, then they also have to give credence to others.

The statue of His Holiness defaced in 3...2...1…

How do you like to think of the little baby FSM? When I think of the little baby FSM, I like to think of him tucked securely in a little to-go container, you know, with some bread and Parmesan all bathed in garlic an whatnot. Ramen!

Update: I’m on record as opposing the Ten Commandments at courthouses. It’s not that I support His Holiness, The FSM being displayed at a courthouse. It’s just that after ramming the Ten Commandments up the asses of the public like a divine suppository, it’s about time the fundamentalists got a taste of their own medicine. Surely there will be outrage. Then they can be shown for the hypocrites they are. In fact, I hope they manage to get this removed.

This could be where we’re headed if we’re not careful:

Many Americans assume that China’s internet users are both aware of and unhappy about their government’s oversight and control of the internet. But in a new survey, most Chinese say they approve of internet control and management, especially when it comes from their government.

According to findings from the fourth and most recent of a series of surveys about internet use in China from 2000 to 2007,1 over 80% of respondents say they think the internet should be managed or controlled, and in 2007, almost 85% say they think the government should be responsible for doing it.

This survey was funded by the New York-based Markle Foundation and directed by an internationally respected research team at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.2 As required of all public-opinion polling in China, either the survey or the surveyors must be approved by the government, and some topics that Westerners might have liked to see addressed directly, such as censorship, were not. But a close reading of the results and findings highlights the Chinese perspective on some sensitive issues.

The Chinese government has long tried to control its internet in many ways. It censors or blocks politically-outspoken blogs. It has arrested citizens on charges of “inciting subversion” for posting articles in chat rooms critical of the Communist Party. It passes internet traffic through a “Great Firewall” designed to deny access to such international websites as Wikipedia, Technorati, all blogs hosted by Blogspot, and many sites maintained by the BBC. It also censors content on Chinese-based sites dealing with a host of topics, including the religious group Falun Gong, the 1989 Tiananmen incident, corruption among government officials, the independence movement in Taiwan, a free Tibet, various human rights issues, political incidents, or citizens’ uprisings.

The government justifies its control of the internet—like its control of all broadcast and print media—with familiar broadsweeping rhetoric. Most recently, on the brink of ushering in the Year of the Rat, the government issued a regulation forbidding online audio or video content “that damages China’s unity and sovereignty, harms ethnic solidarity, promotes superstition, portrays violence, pornography, gambling or terrorism, violates privacy, damages China’s culture or traditions."3

Oh for crying out loud:

Gilbert Chan, a business reporter at The Bee, pleaded not guilty Friday to a felony charge of possession of child pornography.

Chan, 52, of Davis was arrested after trying to conceal a camera he was using to videotape a youth cheerleading competition at UC Davis on Feb. 3, police said.

Yolo County prosecutors filed a complaint alleging a single felony count of possessing obscene matter depicting sexual conduct of a person under 18.

Chan’s lawyer, Steven Sabbadini, questioned the charge. “What he did was film fully clothed cheerleaders during a public performance,” he said. “The question is whether that fits the definition of child pornography.”

The charge carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison. It also can be reduced to a misdemeanor.

Chan, who was not on duty at the time of the incident, is on administrative leave from The Bee.

Maybe there’s more to this.  Maybe they’ve been after this guy for a while and took an excuse.  Maybe he’s got a home filled with, you know, actual kiddy porn.  But if not, this has to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard of in ... well, to be honest, I hear about ridiculous crap all the time—hence the blogging.  This is getting more and more common.  A while back, I blogged about people being forbidden from videotaping kids in parks—in that particular case, it was their own kids.

But let’s think about this.  Let us assume, for the moment, that Chan is getting off by watching dance routines by underage cheerleaders.  Should this be a crime?  We don’t punish people for wanting to have sex with underage girls.  We arrest them for, you, having or trying to have sex with underage girls.  The reason we ban child pornography is not to avoid stimulating the appetites of creeps.  It’s to keep kids from being exploited, molested and harmed by the production or distribution of it.

Also, why is what this guy did a crime, but when ESPN shows the National Cheerleading competitions, it’s not?

One last thing. If you’re worried about someone sexualizing your kids?  It’s probably not the best idea in the world to have them dress in skimpy outfits and do suggestive dance routines in public.

Just sayin’.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Mini-Me is venting again.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea continued Sunday to lash out at the new conservative government in Seoul, threatening to reduce the South to “ashes” if the South Korean government made the “slightest move” to attack.

The warning, one of the harshest in years, was a response to a statement by Kim Tae-young, the head of the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, that his military would strike suspected North Korean nuclear weapons sites if Pyongyang attempted to attack the South with atomic bombs.

North Korea typically makes incendiary statements toward the United States and South Korea when Washington and Seoul conduct joint military exercises or when the countries put pressure on the hard-line government of Kim Jong-il to change its policies. The South Korean government did not respond immediately to the warning Sunday.

The North Korean statement, made by an unidentified military affairs commentator at Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, also reiterated the North’s threat to end all inter-Korean government contacts unless Seoul apologized for Mr. Kim’s remark, which it described as “war mongering.”

“Everything will be in ashes, not just a sea of fire, if our advanced pre-emptive strike once begins,” the commentator was quoted as saying.

Well, at least Mini-Me will be able to fit into an urn without being cremated if it comes down to that.

Well, I’m sure this could have happened to anyone.

Police say a missing Orleans County, N.Y., pastor has been found — physically fine but emotionally distraught — at a strip club outside Dayton, Ohio, The Buffalo News reports.

Shortly after 1 a.m. Friday, police reported they had located the Rev. Craig Rhodenizer’s vehicle outside a club in Riverside, Ohio. They were suspicious when they spotted an out-of-state license plate in a relatively high-crime area.

Police ran the plate number and learned that Rhodenizer had been reported missing by his family early Thursday. Officers soon found Rhodenizer inside the strip club, The Buffalo News reports.

“When they had contact with him, he appeared to be very distraught and very emotional,” Lewiston Sgt. Frank Previte told The Buffalo News. “He told the officers that he did not know how he got there or where he was.”

Let me guess-the Devil made him do it…

Yes this is almost exactly where I live.Man shot dead on the 101 freeway. It does have both a “nothing to see here” and “what the fuck is going on?” appeal to it.

LOS ANGELES - Rescue crews responding to a wreck on a Los Angeles freeway found a driver fatally shot in the head early Sunday, while another driver was shot and wounded in a separate attack about 30 miles away, authorities said.

The shootings were the latest in a string of attacks on Southern California freeways that have alarmed motorists and authorities.

Investigators did not know what led to the fatal shooting on the 101 Freeway in the San Fernando Valley on Sunday. The wreck snarled traffic for several hours near Van Nuys.

“There’s absolutely no witnesses at this time, no information,” Los Angeles police Officer Norma Eisenman said.

The car crashed near a freeway onramp, so it was possible the victim was shot before entering the highway, Eisenman said.

There was actually a string of freeway shootings I don’t think the police had any luck getting to the bottom of. Here’s the short and skinny of this stretch of freeway that would spook you if you live here. In Los Angeles one mistake on one of these freeways means hours of delay. Los Angelinos EXPECT you to know every freeway, it’s ins and outs and generally not fuck around getting from point A to point B wherever you are going.

We’re all going fast as hell, and we all are probably padding an extra 30 minutes freeway time to our schedule as is. The 101 is trick because LA has a weird (and stupid) culture of addressing freeways. They are associate by name and not direction, and they don’t obey their own logic. For example, the 101 goes both east/west and north/south. It has a name associated with it according to the direction it’s now heading. Where this poor bastard was shot, it moves east/west and not north south. It picks up where the 134 ends (I don’t know why it’s not simply a continuation of the 134) and it creates a lot of confusion.

A little bit of a sidebar, but a dynamic nonetheless. Now the other thing that is very apparent, and dangerous where I live is Gang violence. I have become adept at reading graffiti, which is an instant indicator of who has laid claim to your block and any impending wars to come. Basically a gang war starts when a gang claiming to own a neighborhood is challenged by a rival. The challenger will X out your tag (a mark left on every street corner you “own") and write in thier gang name instead. sometimes gangsters take individual credit for the beef (like you’ll see them sign off with “Clowny” or “Loco"). Gangs are a way of life here, and kids join them for protection.

This guy’s shooting has the markings of a gang shooting to me. I always give LAPD the benefit of the doubt, now that I’ve been here and see what they’re up against. These people are trained and battle hardened killers, and the motto is “for life.” that means they don’t intend to change. “No motive” usually means gang retribution crime in LAPD speak, I have learned. It may turn out otherwise, but shot dead and no motive smacks of gang activity. As I live in Van Nuys area and we are on the outskirts of LA County, little police and many cheap Section 8 houses are fostered in the area. Gangs love Section 8 housing because it’s hotbeds for criminals, impossible to get evicted, and they can torment the entire community to allow them to turn the place into a meth lab and sales retailer.

I have no doubt that this victim is, he’s probably got a story behind him. the one thing I will say about gangs is that they are careful to only kill their own. Killing a “herb” (us) will draw a lot of attention, and usually is the point liberals allow cops to take the cuffs off and do some real head bashing on these guys. It’s the reason why indiscriminate killing is not on the table most of the time.

Update:

The Daily News has identified the victim as Marlon Gordillo Secal this morning. Hmmm, twenty year old latino male shot dead for no reason. What’s the LAPD think?

He did not appear to be a gang member, said Capt. James Miller, head of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Van Nuys Division. Detectives are not sure where he was coming from or where he was headed.

Translation: “We are not allowed to call this kid a Cholo gangbanger for fear of ACLU retribution. However, we immediatly noticed that the kid had Gang Affiliation tattoos, a shaved head and was clad in blue LA Dodgers apparel.” thanks a heaping pile to any of the readers who donate regularly to the ACLU and not the police department.