Exxon will not have to pay for cleanup after its giant spill in Arkansas because of a loophole that classifies the oil the pipe was carrying as something other than oil.

… allow me to point you to this development.

This 4.8m monster is NOT a record-setting crocodile. In fact, it’s at least two meters short of the record. As IO9 notes, crocs this big aren’t even that unusual there.

Again: KILL IT WITH FIRE.

If you’re like me, then part of you wishes you could just pull a Kathy Bates whenever someone pulls out in front of you and makes you slam on your brakes. Why not just hit them, dammit?

Of course, we don’t do these things, because of the damage to our cars that would result, not to mention the possibility of injury and liabilty to the other driver.

Apparently, though, the rules are rather different for Russian bus drivers, as the linked video shows. The driver known as The Punisher refuses to slow down when drivers cut in front of him, with predictably delicious results.

He is, of course, our new Heathen Hero.

OHIO MAN CHARGED WITH SHOOTING ROBOT.

The FBI is continuing to trumpet its success in quashing terror plots it invented and then entrapped people into joining.

I can’t help but think that, while this is certainly good for career advancement and increased funding and whatnot, it’s probably not the best use of our tax dollars.

You should go read the hero of Midway‘s obituary. Like, now.

You should go check this out over at NPR, like, right now.

At the Atlantic: The Two Sentences That Should Be Part of All Discussion of the Debt Ceiling:

1. Raising the debt ceiling does not authorize one single penny in additional public spending.

2. For Congress to “decide whether” to raise the debt ceiling, for programs and tax rates it has already voted into law, makes exactly as much sense as it would for a family to “decide whether” to pay a credit-card bill for goods it has already bought.

CNBC is reporting that the national office of the BSA is close to abandoning its anti-homosexual stance.

The Mormons are going to absolutely shit.

Much has been made lately of the Boy Scouts of America’s retrograde policies regarding gays and lesbians, and they’ve lost lots of funding because of it. Some apologists have tried to make the argument that “well, the national office can say whatever they want, but local groups are free to run things their own way.”

Actually, no. A Maryland Cub Scout pack may lose its charter unless they abandon their explicit nondiscrimination policy.

(MeFi.)

Apple (AAPL) has just announced its quarterly results. It has had the most profitable year of any company ever, and the fourth most profitable quarter of any company ever. Year over year results were strong. But the analysts didn’t think it was shocking enough, so the stock tanked after hours, dropping below $450 a share (i.e., only a few dollars up from its 52-week low).

At this price, Apple is trading at a P/E of about 10. Its market cap is about $424 billion — and it’s a company sitting on $184 billion in cash, and that fucking prints money like no company ever before it.

And the stock’s taking a beating. I’m thinking it’s buying time. Except, you know, 100-share lots on a $400 stock are kind of a big bet.

A conservative group is upset because, clearly, Texas A&M is entirely too liberal.

Just go read. This woman and her office are proximately responsible for Aaron Swartz‘s death. They are government sanctioned bullies of the worst sort, emblematic of the excessive reach of prosecutors and law enforcement everywhere.

More at HBR.

Also, note that the supposed crime and charges were hogwash anyway. Seriously, I hope these people never get a decent night’s sleep again.

I’m not sure there’s a more insipid part of the astonishingly vapid pageant process than the Q&A, but at least it’s given us some serious comedy gold in the past.

This time around, it’s almost better; Miss Iowa, as it happens, was asked about the legalization of pot. In response, she was firm and clear in her belief that it should only be used for medicinal purposes, or recreation, but nothing else.

Glad that’s clear, Brainiac.

This is the coolest liquor-store fire story you will ever see. Watch the video; it includes surveillance footage.

A downed 100-year-old oak tree in New Haven turned out to have a human skeleton tied up in its roots.

One hypothesis:

The skeleton could belong to a victim of smallpox, interred in what amounted to a “mass burial site.”

As evidence, he cited a passage in the New Haven Green chapter of the book, “Historical Sketches of New Haven.” The book describes how some notables, beginning with Martha Townsend, were buried in the walled-off cemetery behind the Center Church on the Green. Others were buried in the rest of the Upper Green, apparently with great density.

“Sometimes, at the dead of night, apart from the others, the victims of smallpox were fearfully hid here,” the book reads. “The ground was filled with graves between the Church and College Street; sixteen bodies having been found within sixteen square feet.”

The last bodies were buried there in the 1700s, Greenberg said. In 1821, the stones were moved to the Grove Street Cemetery, and the ground was raised to level off the Green. The bodies remained behind.

Happy Halloween.

Just how many “terror plots” has the FBI actually thwarted that weren’t conceived from the get-go as sting operations by the FBI itself?

He did pretty well, speaking about Arab Spring, about Chris Stevens, about violence and tolerance, about democracy and values, and about America in the world.

Here’s a bit, but I think you should make time to read the whole thing. It won’t take long. The President does a pretty fine job of encapsulating what I think of as the best of American ideals, the backbone of who we’d like to be. It isn’t who we always are — America is an aspirational state — but it is our goal, and we are our best selves when we work toward it.

Anyway, a sample:

That is what we saw play out in the last two weeks, as a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. Now, I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well – for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and every faith. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion – we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.

I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. The answer is enshrined in our laws: Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech. Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. As president of our country, and commander-in-chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so. Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views – even views that we profoundly disagree with.

We do so not because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views, and practice their own faith, may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities. We do so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech – the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.

I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech – we recognize that. But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete. The question, then, is how do we respond. And on this we must agree: there is no speech that justifies mindless violence.

There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There is no video that justifies an attack on an Embassy. There is no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon, or destroy a school in Tunis, or cause death and destruction in Pakistan. In this modern world, with modern technologies, for us to respond in that way to hateful speech empowers any individual who engages in such speech to create chaos around the world. We empower the worst of us, if that’s how we respond.

If attempts to contact a local rep are routed without exception to a call center somewhere else, they hate you. Take your business elsewhere if you can’t get past the call center “customer deflection shield.”

Catholics? Meet the Boy Scouts, your partners in kiddie-diddling and coverups.

Just go look.

According to a new study, 62% of bankruptcies in 2007 were due to medical costs, and 3/4 had medical insurance.

Jesus Christ: Rushbiddies.

Suspicion-less inspections have absolutely got to stop. They are plainly illegal and against all established precedent.

You are not required to answer these bullshit questions. You cannot be detained without suspicion. That is ILLEGAL.

DHS is creeping evil. Period.

This is lovely.

“Every 36 hours in the United States, one black woman, man, or child is killed by police, and by a smaller number of security guards and self appointed vigilantes.”

Neil Armstrong died over the weekend. He was 82. When he took that famous “one small step,” he was not yet 39 — which shows in his official NASA portrait.

If you haven’t watched it recently, this is a good time to review the video taken at the time. Also, io9 has the text from the Times coverage back in 1969, which is pretty great. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m not sure we as a species have accomplished ANYTHING even remotely as awesome as this since July 21, 1969.

This is my favorite picture of Mr Armstrong. Buzz Aldrin took it, after Armstrong had come in from the most significant walk in the history of mankind. You can see the gravity of the moment in his eyes.

Here’s the thing: Armstrong then mostly eschewed the spotlight, and never did anything to sully the accomplishment or what it meant for the space program, for the US, or for humans in general. He was, by all accounts, an unassuming and humble man who understood what he had been a part of in the larger, human sense despite (as is and was obvious) the Cold War aspects of the space race. In an age of serious term dilution, this was a guy who really was a hero.

There’s lots of grreat stuff in the Metafilter thread, which includes a pointer to The Big Picture feature on Apollo 11 from the 40th anniversary a few years ago. (Also noted in that thread: Charles Lindbergh knew both Armstrong and Orville Wright.)

And here’s the other thing. It’s awful that Armstrong has died without seeing another serious move in space in 40 years. We quit in 1972. Nobody’s been out of low earth orbit since, and that means — as XKCD points out — that we are quickly running out of people who’ve walked on other worlds.

This is shameful, and we should fix it.

Good Lord, there were only 12 to start with, and only 8 survive. (The youngest of these giants is the sprightly 76-year-old Charles Duke.) Perhaps, when someday we manage to escape low earth orbit again, someone can do for Armstrong and Aldrin what those great me did for Yuri Gagarin. The notion that these 8 may die without seeing us exceed their journey is the worst sort of anti-tribute.

Finally, here is a statement from the Armstrong family, which concludes with

For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink.

Will do.

PS: Another Neil has a nice blog entry on the subject.

Shit like this will not stop until cops are held personally responsible for their excesses.

Apparently, in Texas, it’s okay for TransCanada to condemn and claim land with no governmental oversight. That can’t possibly be abused, right?

More here.

…you’re aware of the dustup with Progressive Insurance this week.

Thanks in part to rapidly spreading outrage, Progressive has agreed to a settlement with the woman’s family. However, we should not interpret this as them doing the right thing. This is them trying to make the pain stop.

There is no reason to believe they’re any less reprehensible today than yesterday. Actual virtue is what happens when nobody’s looking, and we’ve seen how Progressive behaves in that context already.

A native-born American citizen in Arizona was arrested and jailed for 4-1/2 months, and charged with forgery, because the cops and prosecutors refused to admit her drivers’ license and birth certificate were genuine. As a consequence, she lost her job, her home, and her car.

More here.

Again: Shit like this will not stop until the individual humans who make choices like this can be held civilly and criminally liable far more easily. End immunity. Now.

Google, as it turns out, has a pretty incredible death benefit.

Apparently, there’s a school in Louisiana that is demanding some girls take pregnancy tests; those who refuse, or who are determined to be pregnant, are kicked out of school.

WAT.

It’s like the axis of MS-LA-AL is in some kind of demented race to the bottom.

Tell me again how successful our manic drug freakout has been.

BART escalators caked in human poo.

“Just days after a poacher’s snare had killed one of their own, two young mountain gorillas worked together Tuesday to find and destroy traps in their Rwandan forest home.”

Via MeFi.

You just can’t make this stuff up:

Apparently, a judge has ruled that it’s legal for cops to use your phone to impersonate you if the seize it, and that messages that come into the phone after its been seized are no longer worthy of Constitutional protection.

I for one am shocked — shocked! — to learn that the Border Patrol behaves like this.

Oh, wait. No, I’m not.

Again, the only that that will produce greater accountability in law enforcement is civil and criminal liability for the actual officers. The problem with CBP is even bigger, since their victims are essentially powerless, which has clearly led to a situation where they feel they can get away with anything they want — with predictable consequences.

The Worst Marriage in Georgetown is the story of Albrecht Muth and his improbable union with the Viola Drath, some 40+ years his senior.

Wow. Just . . . wow.

The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America’s Middle Class.

This DEA bureaucrat will not admit, under pointed and repeated questioning, that heroin and crack are more dangerous than marijuana.

She will not do so because her job and her agency depend on everyone believing something false: that all these drugs pose an existential threat to the country, and that they must be eradicated, and that aggressive law enforcement activity is the right path, and that (moreover) this mission is possible without destroying civil liberties as we know them. Funding depends on this. Jobs depend on this. And so she continues to lie.

That she may even believe the lie does not make her any less of a liar.

Yeah, they’re trying to force the issue now. Check your profile; they’ve replaced the email you elected to show in your profile with your special “@facebook.com” email address.

Nice.

Fortunately, it’s easy to fix, but let this remind you that Facebook will absolutely change your preferences to suit their needs. You are not their customer. You are their product. Behave accordingly.

This is just absurd. As is often the case, we can find civil forfeiture laws contributing to this bizarre pursuit.

Other sources are picking up on the fact that the FBI is creating its own terror plots to foil, possibly causing them to miss real ones.

Wired News:

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a lower court decision that said federal officials cannot be sued for damages for the torture of Americans on U.S. soil.

In other words, the Feds can waterboard the hell out of you while holding you secretly and without trial, and you have no legal recourse.

Someone needs to explain to me very quickly how this doesn’t make it legal for the government to disappear people, a la Pinochet.

North Carolina, fresh on the heels of their gay-hatin’ work of the last month or so, have now decided on a novel way to solve the issue of rising sea levels caused by global warming: they’ll make it illegal.