cetaylor: Everything you need to know about Mayan 2012 nonsense: They couldn’t foresee the end of their own effin’ civilization in the 16th century.
October 17, 2009
Tweet of the day: Mayan prognostication
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October 12, 2009
Protip: a police station parking lot is not a “private place”
BBC News reports that a couple of Edinburgh pub-goers chose a particularly unsuitable place to go have sex after meeting in the pub:
An amorous couple have been fined for having sex in broad daylight — in a police station car park.
Leanne Richardson, 26, and Ross Welsh, 30, had to be physically stopped mid sex act by officers from Portobello police station in Edinburgh.
They both pleaded guilty to committing a breach of the peace in the car park on 21 April and were fined £200.
October 9, 2009
October 7, 2009
QotD: The essence of religion
The fuel of every religion, one way or another, is guilt. Properly indoctrinated — generally from birth — a religious individual cannot eat, sleep, work, make love, or do much of anything else, either as a living organism in general, or a human being in particular, without automatically accumulating a burden of guilt that has to be discharged somehow from time to time, preferably (that is, preferably to those in the guilt-discharging industry) through the heavenly apparatus, sacred plumbing, and holy mechanics of whatever religion controls the territory.
Throw a nickel on the drum, save another drunken bum.
Churches are generally in the business of peddling forgiveness — for having done things nobody can avoid doing if they’re a living, physical creature. They’re middlemen between God and sinner (this means you). They may only want you to come to church on a regular basis, sing the songs, say the prayers, drop a quarter in the plate. Or they may want something else, your witness, your testimony, your speaking in “tongues”. In this hemisphere, once upon a time, climbing to the top of a pyramid and having your heart chopped out was highly encouraged.
L. Neil Smith, “Time for Another Another Reformation”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2009-10-04
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October 5, 2009
Maybe this is why some eBay sellers don’t ship outside the US
The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with — get this — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.
That’s right. Orchids.
By March 2004, federal prosecutors were well on their way to turning 66-year-old retiree George Norris into an inmate in a federal penitentiary — based on his home-based business of cultivating, importing and selling orchids.
[. . .]
Mr. Norris ended up spending almost two years in prison because he didn’t have the proper paperwork for some of the many orchids he imported. The orchids were all legal — but Mr. Norris and the overseas shippers who had packaged the flowers had failed to properly navigate the many, often irrational, paperwork requirements the U.S. imposed when it implemented an arcane international treaty’s new restrictions on trade in flowers and other flora.
H/T to Radley Balko.
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October 2, 2009
September 28, 2009
Random links of possible interest
- More on the ongoing ammunition shortage in the US, as manufacturers are still unable to produce enough to satisfy demand.
- Police at G20 take trophy photo including arrested protester handcuffed and kneeling in front of the group. H/T to Radley Balko.
- Voyeurs rejoice! What sounds like a report from the Journal of Spike TV reveals that a mere 10 minutes of ogling well-endowed women provides as much benefit to men as 30 minutes in the gym, as far as heart disease, high blood pressure and stress are concerned. H/T to Ghost of a Flea.
- New Zealand bans in-vehicle GPS navigation systems . . . but only if they’re running on a mobile phone. Non-phone based systems apparently don’t distract you with directions the way phone-based ones do. Or something.
- Detroit Lions fans love the Washington Redskins.
September 26, 2009
British libraries now afraid to lend scissors to patrons
The staff at the Holborn Library in London are apparently very worried about the risk of being attacked by library patrons, so they won’t even lend scissors:
Lorna Watts, 26, a self-employed dressmaker, was turned down at Holborn Library in central London.
She said: “It’s ridiculous — public libraries are supposed to be supportive of small businesses.”
A spokeswoman for Camden Council, which runs the library, has apologised and said it would investigate the incident.
Ms Watts, from Islington, north London, said: “I asked why I couldn’t borrow a pair of scissors and she said, ‘they are sharp, you might stab me’.
“I then asked to borrow a guillotine to cut up my leaflets but she refused again — because she said I could hit her over the head with it!”
The way Britain has been going, I’m surprised they didn’t hit Ms. Watts with an ASBO for the implied threat here: “It’s absurd — there are plenty of heavy books I could have hit her with if I wanted to.”
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September 18, 2009
We’ve gone far past the “let the punishment fit the crime” stage
A very disturbing post at Classically Liberal that I urge you to read:
What was once considering a normal rite of passage, typical curiosity that the newly sexualized young have about themselves, their bodies, and the bodies of others, has become a heinous crime. Not long ago a curious adolescent or child, caught exploring, or playing doctor in the back yard, was given a talking-to, sent to bed early, and warned to not do it again — a warning most heeded for at least another few years, after which time warnings were useless. Today, it has been criminalized, and criminalized in a way far exceeding crimes of violence. A youth who has sex with another youth, even if voluntary, could well face legal sentences far worse than if they had killed their friend.
The absurdity of charging a teenager with statutory rape for having sex with another teenager (and sometimes even charging each partner for victimizing the other) shouldn’t need to be discussed — it’s flat-out insane for the legal system to be involved in the vast majority of these cases. They shouldn’t even be cases!
It is literally true that a teen would be punished far less severely for murder than for consensual sexual contact with another teen. A murderer, after a trial is sentenced to a term in prision (with the possibility of parole/early release in many cases). After being released from prison, they’ve “paid their debt to society” and at least in theory can try to resume a normal life.
Someone who gets caught up in the “sexual offender” category will be punished for the rest of his or her life: once their names go on the official register, they will never, ever, be free again. They can’t work in any job that might mean contact with the general public (if they can even get hired at all). They can’t live within arbitrary distances of schools, playgrounds, or other areas where children might gather . . . which in practice means they can’t legally live anywhere.
How is this in any way proportional to the “crime”? How can this be called “justice”?
September 13, 2009
Pond fish now protected from boy’s toy boat
If you guessed from the headline that this was another little tale from Britain’s burgeoning “Nanny State”, you’re quite correct:
Security guards ban boy, 9, from sailing toy boat on pond because it ‘frightens the fish’
Security guards reduced a nine-year-old boy to tears after banning him from sailing his toy boat on a pond because it ‘frightens the fish’.
Noah Bailey was distraught after staff at Chiswick Business Park, in west London, stopped him playing with his model of the German battleship Bismarck.His grandfather Paul Fabricius, 57, said that when they went to complain about the draconian rule the guard refused to tell him the name of the manager for ‘security reasons’.
So the fish are being protected from model ships run by nine-year-olds, but you can’t complain because the names and contact information of the “authorities” must be concealed from the public. Don’t you feel safer now?
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September 5, 2009
September 4, 2009
Yesterday, the wine. Today, it’s the candy label.
After yesterday’s indecent-in-Alabama wine label, today’s outrage is a German candy wrapper that has raised someone’s ire in Britain. Here’s the Telegraph report:
Simon Simpkins, a father of two, said he was shocked at the “pornographic” poses when he bought the sour candy for his children Benjamin and Ofelia.
Mr Simpkins, of Pontefract, West Yorks, told The Sun: “The lemon and lime are locked in what appears to be a carnal encounter.
“The lime, who I assume to be the gentleman in this coupling, has a particularly lurid expression on his face. I demanded to see the shop manager and, during a heated exchange, my wife became quite distressed and had to sit down in the car park.”
H/T to Christian T. for the link. Roger Henry quickly commented:
I can understand why his wife became distressed and had to sit down in the car-park. Probably overcome with hysterics after watching her husband make an absolute public prat of himself.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
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September 3, 2009
Alabama belatedly bans “indecent” wine
Three years after it started being sold in the state, Alabama decided that this is indecent:
Slashfood reports:
Wine and scantily clad women may sound like some cad’s idea of a good time, but the combo spells trouble in Alabama, which last week banned the sale of a California-made wine bottle adorned with a naked nymph — helping boost its sales elsewhere in the nation.
Pursuant to the state’s administrative code, the Alabama Beverage Control Board ordered Hahn Family Wines to remove its Cycles Gladiator wines from shelves throughout the state, calling its label “immodest.” According to Hahn president Bill Legion, a small state board in Alabama rejected the artwork last year, but the ruling did not catch Legion’s eye. His apparent defiance of the state’s decision — he claims the paperwork “fell through the cracks” — led to the ban.
“It’s turned out to be a great thing for us,” laughs Legion, who says he’s received calls of support from oenophiles around the world.
I haven’t tried the Cabernet Sauvignon, but I did have a few glasses of their Pinot Noir last week . . . very nice, although rather more full bodied than traditional Pinot (Burgundy, where pinot noir is the primary red wine grape, is a cool climate zone, as are most of the other well known pinot producer regions).
August 31, 2009
More police hijinks in the UK
Natalie Solent looks at two particularly intrusive expansions of British policing. One I’ve already discussed: Police nicking goods from unlocked vehicles, but the other one is new to me:
On the same theme, Longrider has a story about the police in Northamptonshire impounding cars if the same car with foreign plates is seen twice more than six months apart. A Mr West writes:
I live in Spain for about seven months of the year and France for the other five. My Spanish-registered car was impounded in March after two short visits to the UK within nine months of each other.
At the start of 2009, a pilot scheme called Operation Andover started in Northamptonshire, with any foreign vehicle seen just twice, more than six months apart, being impounded without warning.
Once again, Mr West got his car back, eventually. But he had to fight not to pay a fee of several hundred pounds. As he points out, an enormously common reason for a foreign registered car being seen twice in the same place a year apart might be, not the effort to evade paying UK road tax that the police seem (pretend?) to suspect, but regular visitors coming to Britain at about the same time every year.
So the police can not only nick stuff out of your car, if it’s got a non-UK license plate, they can take the whole thing. Fascinating.
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