Yearly Archives: 2010

There’s so much suck here I can hardly stand it

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Balko has more; it’s yet another tale of goofball prosecutorial tomfoolery and law-enforcement vendettas against pain management people.

In this particular case, a Bush-appointed US Attorney is actively persecuting a third party for questioning her prosecution of a pain specialist.

Yeah, you read that right. She’s brought charges against someone for criticizing her, and has further managed to get the court to rule the whole thing is too sensitive to be public. How chilling is that?

The whole imbroglio started under Bush, but — as I noted when he was making those power grabs — the Executive branch almost never lets go of power, so the abuse has continued under Obama’s watch.

The case is now in front of SCOTUS. Balko quotes Jacob Sullum:

This level of secrecy, which the Associated Press says “has alarmed First Amendment supporters” who see it as “highly unusual” and “patently wrong,” is clearly not justified by the need to protect the confidentiality of grand jury proceedings. The 10th Circuit decided to seal even the Reason/I.J. amicus brief, which is based entirely on publicly available information. More generally, the gist of the case could have been discussed without revealing grand jury material, as Reynolds’ Supreme Court petition shows. Although the court-ordered redactions make the 10th Circuit’s reasoning as described in the petition hard to follow at times, the details generally can be filled in with information that has been reported in the press (which shows how silly the pretense of secrecy is). Furthermore, one of the main justifications for grand jury secrecy — that it protects innocent people who are investigated but never charged — does not apply in a case like this, where the target of the investigation wants more openness and it’s the government that is trying to hide information. As Corn-Revere argues, such secrecy turns the intended role of the grand jury on its head, making it an instrument of oppression instead of a bulwark against it…

I’d like to show you the Reason/I.J. brief defending Reynolds’ First Amendment rights, but I’m not allowed to!

Henceforth, she will be known as Officer Badass

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Off-duty cop Feris Jones was getting her hair in Brooklyn done on Saturday when a thief became very unlucky:

The gunman ordered the four people there […] to place their belongings in a black bag, the police said. He then ordered them into a bathroom in the back while he searched the shop for more worth stealing.

In the bathroom, Mr. Browne said, Officer Jones pulled out her revolver. She whispered to the other three women to lie down and gave the proprietor her cellphone and told her to call 911. Then she stepped out of the bathroom, identified herself as a police officer and ordered the robber to drop his gun, the police said. He refused and opened fire from about 12 feet away, Mr. Browne said, shooting four times in quick succession.

One bullet whizzed past Officer Jones’s head. She fired back, emptying her five-shot revolver. One shot knocked the gun from the man’s two-handed grip, piercing his right middle finger and grazing his left hand, according to the police. Another shot hit the lock on the front door, jamming it. The gunman tried to flee, Mr. Browne said, but could not get the door open. Finally, he grabbed his gun, kicked out a lower panel on the door and crawled out. Officer Jones followed him out the door to see which way he was running.

Winston Cox, 19, was eventually apprehended in a Brooklyn motel after police tracked him via his blood trail to his mother’s home.

The story does not say, but I really hope Officer Jones blew the smoke from her barrel as Cox ran away.

This is bad. Do not support this.

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Apple has released the guidelines for its new “Mac App Store,” and they’re basically the same as for the iPhone: an iron hand controlling the whole process, no guarantee of placement, a 30% cut to Apple, and a whole lot of rules that limit content.

Walled garden crap like this is objectionable on a phone, but Apple’s getting away with it because of how fragmented the market has been. Walled garden bullshit on a real desktop platform is complete and utter horseshit, and deserves to be denounced from every quarter. Seriously, Steve, fuck this. It’s obnoxious and controlling, and could seriously damage your platform.

Christine O’Donnell: Still a buffoon

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The Washington Post covered her most recent debate, wherein it became clear that she did not understand that separation of church and state is part of the First Amendment:

Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O’Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons’ position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that “religious doctrine doesn’t belong in our public schools.”

“Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” O’Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O’Donnell asked: “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?”

Her comments, in a debate aired on radio station WDEL, generated a buzz in the audience.

“You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp,” Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone said after the debate, adding that it raised questions about O’Donnell’s grasp of the Constitution.

This woman wants to be a Senator. Seriously.

Update: TalkingPointsMemo has video.

Foobawl

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So, GOOD for Alabama?

Ohio State looks crappy, and Auburn needed 60+ to put a Mallett-less Arkansas away.

Bad for Alabama, but still awesome? Spurrier’s Cock(s) got stuffed by Kentucky in a match that included some game management tricks right out of Les Miles’ playbook. Bama would be bolstered by SC continuing to win, but at the end of the day we just can’t support supporting South Carolina. Go Wildcats!

Next up: the postgame from the Alabama homecoming game.

Other Note: Today’s best game was probably the “Houston Bowl,” a back-and-forth affair between Rice and UH that Rice eventually won by the skin of its teeth. Heathen HQ are collectively stupid for not attending this one; by all accounts, it was some fine football.

Must. Have.

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Tom Waits recorded some music with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band:

On November 19th, Preservation Hall Recordings will release 504 limited edition hand-numbered 78 rpm vinyl records featuring two tracks by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with very special guest Tom Waits. Proceeds from the sale of this very special project will benefit the Preservation Hall Junior Jazz & Heritage Brass Band.

Mr. Waits traveled to New Orleans in 2009 to record two songs with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band for the critically acclaimed project Preservation: An album to benefit Preservation Hall and the Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program, “Tootie Ma Was A Big Fine Thing,” and “Corrine Died On The Battlefield,” Originally recorded by Danny Barker in 1947, these two selections are the earliest known recorded examples of Mardi Gras Indian chants.

The two tracks will now be packaged in a special limited edition 78 rpm format record, each signed and numbered by Preservation Hall Creative Director Ben Jaffe. The first one hundred records will be accompanied by a custom-made Preservation Hall 78rpm record player as part of a Deluxe Donation package.

Said “deluxe” package is still only $200, and will be available to the first 100 purchases on November 19 at Preservation Hall at 10AM central, or online the day after.

I think I’m about to go buy a plane ticket, as the nice lady at the shop just told me she believes the deluxe edition will only be available onsite. SWA has roundtrips for about $130 for that Friday…

The Mystery of Free Public Wifi

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So, this is sort of delightful and hilarious.

If you travel at all, or take your laptop (or phone, these days) into places that may have a wifi network you can use — airports, hotels, coffeeshops, conference centers, etc. — you’ve seen the everpresent mystery network “Free Public Wifi.” Maybe you’ve even tried to connect to it — I never have, since it looks obviously fake to me, but I have always wondered why it’s there.

Well, NPR has the story. The gist it this:

When a computer running an older version of XP can’t find any of its “favorite” wireless networks, it will automatically create an ad hoc network with the same name as the last one it connected to -– in this case, “Free Public WiFi.” Other computers within range of that new ad hoc network can see it, luring other users to connect.

The hilarious part of this is that the notion of this mythical network has spread based entirely on this bug for years now, but nobody actually knows where the original, valid “Free Public Wifi” network was. It just lives on, a digital zombie, in the memories of a million out-of-date Windows laptops. Here’s a more detailed walkthrough of how the network ID has spread; it really is “viral,” just nondestructive.

Bonus: It’s not the only one. If you see ad-hoc networks out in the wild named things like “dlink” or “linksys,” they’re probably the result of the same bug.

Happy Us.

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Five years ago today, we threw one hell of a party, for the best reason ever.

Happy anniversary, baby. I love you.

erinandchet-wedding.jpg

What magazines used to be like

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The subtitle of this piece is “down the ladder from Playboy to Maxim,” and that about sums it up. Consider that, once upon a time, the best markets for fiction in the US were the “big four” magazines: The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire, and — yes — Playboy. Hef’s mag ran stories by Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Hemingway, Styron, Nabokov, Cheever, and others.

Imagine that in FHM. Hell, imagine anything longer than 200 words in one of those lad mags.

Charlie Stross Bursts Your Bubble

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Herein, he explains why, barring some pretty enormous (i.e., almost magical) developments w/r/t energy production and storage, not to mention propulsion systems, nobody is going to visit that new planet. Possibly ever.

tl;dr? Basically, people have no damn conception of just exactly how far apart things are in the universe, and what kind of energy it takes to move anything of consequence.

(Via JWZ.)

Roll Tide: The Grey Lady Edition

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Tomorrow’s story is already posted in re: the absolute skullfucking Alabama gave #7 Florida tonight:

Alabama does not want any thoughtful dialogue on the national championship race. The Crimson Tide has played poorly on the road and won. It has played with a rebuilt defense and won. It has played without its Heisman Trophy winner and won.

For those watching top-ranked Alabama, it is becoming harder not to end the discussion on half of the national championship matchup, fast-forward to January and put the Crimson Tide in the Bowl Championship Series title game against any of a half-dozen challengers who would all look like underdogs.

A bit later, we come across a fun stat:

Alabama safety Mark Barron, linebacker Courtney Upshaw and defensive lineman Marcell Dareus were particularly hard to handle for the Gators, who gained only 79 yards rushing and were held without a touchdown for the first time since Oct. 1, 2005.

Widely noted by now, of course, is that Alabama QB Greg McElroy has not lost a game in which he started since he was in middle school. That’s a nice run.

Roll. Tide. Roll.

Heathen Nation? You’re old.

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Today, the President released the following statement:

October 2, 2010

Statement by the President on the Occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the Reunification of East and West Germany

On Sunday, October 3, the people of the United States join with the people of the Federal Republic of Germany in celebrating the Day of German Unity and the 20th anniversary of the unification of East and West Germany. This was an historic achievement, as Germans peacefully reunited and advanced our shared vision of a Europe whole and free, anchored in the Euro-Atlantic institutions of NATO and the European Union. The United States commemorates today that spirit and the many accomplishments of Germany, one of our closest allies and greatest friends. We pay tribute to the countless contributions Germans have made to our own history and society. We honor the courage and conviction of the German people that brought down the Berlin Wall, ending decades of painful and artificial separation. It unleashed a spirit of hope and joy, and opened the door to unprecedented freedom throughout the European continent and around the world. The American people are proud of our role in defending a free Berlin and in supporting the German people in their quest for human dignity. We remain proud of our partnership with our German allies to advance freedom, prosperity, and stability around the world. We congratulate the people of Germany on this National Day, and we express our gratitude for our vital friendship.

Germany, of course, was traditionally one nation, except for 45-year postwar period that was considered “normal” for GenX. People who can vote today have never heard of “East Germany.”

Where you tax money goes

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It’s painfully obvious that most people are completely ignorant about not just taxation but also basic facts about where your tax money goes. This is particularly galling, since we live in an age of Miracles and Wonders where such answers are seconds away with any web browser.

Most Heathen understand how tax brackets work, of course, but I thought it might be useful to link to this rundown of where tax dollars actually go, from the folks at NPR’s Planet Money (which is in general very, very worth your time).

In the linked post, the PM guys provide a hypothetical receipt for a taxpayer who earned $34,140 and paid $5,400 in Federal taxes and FICA.

By far the largest chunks are Social Security (about 19% of the tax bill), Medicare (12%), and Medicaid (7%). Next up is interest on the national debt (5%), the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (4%). Where’s foreign aid? 0.8%. NASA? Half a percent.

Oh, and arts funding? Only 24 cents of this tax bill, which is a whopping 0.004%. Click through; it’s interesting — plus, it’s just plain responsible to have some notion of the relative sizes of the various Federal obligations.

Yes, he is. Good of you to notice.

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Among this year’s MacArthur ‘Genius’ Fellowship recipients is the creator of The Wire, David Simon. He is said to feel mildly guilty, given his status in an industry that has funded him pretty consistently, but as far as Heathen HQ is concerned he deserves it for the groundbreaking, astonishing accomplishment that is the Wire.

From the Salon story:

Simon … said his wife would like to thank the foundation for “five years of fresh material.” The morning after she heard the news, Simon’s wife, best-selling novelist Laura Lippman, told him, “Hey Genius, you forgot to take the trash out last night.”

On the New Yorker

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I have, for many, many years, been a happy New Yorker subscriber. Their brand of long-form, intelligent written articles is increasingly rare in the American publishing landscape. Every other magazine seems content to give us a page or two, but the New Yorker will commission and print articles that sometimes require more than one sitting, and that’s just fantastic (The Atlantic and Harper’s still do this, too, but beyond them I’m at a loss for another US publication that does).

The New Yorker, too, has done some pretty interesting things digitally, at least up to now. They offered their entire archive on CD and DVD, and then on a hard drive, and finally online; in none of these cases was the product poorly-scanned and haphazardly OCR’d text — instead, the New Yorker provided full-page scans of entire issues, complete with vintage ads, all the way back to the beginning of time.

It’s a wonderful thing, I tell you.

What I’ve been waiting for, though, has been a real digital companion for my New Yorker subscription. I travel quite frequently, and always end up with 2 or 3 issues in my bag — maybe I’m partway through a long Sy Hersh piece in one issue, and want to catch up on the fiction from another, or whatever. The New Yorker is a weekly, too, so issue proliferation is a problem around the house — you don’t want to accidentally discard an issue without being sure you’ve read all you want to read!

I had high hopes for the New Yorker when I first heard that publications would be available on the Kindle, but those hopes were quickly dashed. Some numbskull at Conde Nast decreed that (a) the full text wouldn’t be available on Amazon’s device; and (b) no pictures would be present at all; and (c) the cost would be greater than a print subscription. Add to this the fact that a walled-garden digital subscription is by definition a rental — Amazon can zap your back issues at any time! — that you can’t share (no more “hey, read this!”), and it starts to look like a very bad deal indeed.

Today, the net is abuzz with the introduction of the New Yorker iPad app, which at first blush comes much closer to the mark. Appaarently, each new issue will have an iPad edition, complete with full text, all the pictures, all the cartoons, and the whole nine yards. That’s a great idea. What ruins it, and with it the New Yorker’s digital strategy, is that apparently the same numbskull is still handling pricing: Each iPad issue is $5, still contains a boatload of ads, and there is no provision for discounting or bundling for existing print subscribers. (Who, I note, retain access to the clunky web experience mentioned above for the whole of the archive.)

The New Yorker is a great magazine, but I can’t imagine buying even a great magazine TWICE. This is what the music industry wanted us to do (pay multiple times to play a song at home, on our iPods, in our cars, as ringtones), and it’s what the book-and-magazine industry would like to dupe us into.

I say bollocks. For now, if I want to carry back issues with me in digital form, I guess I’ll be printing a whole bunch of PDFs, because FUCK this iPad pricing model.

Tea Partiers: Stupid or Evil?

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Once again, Fred Clark knocks it out of the park. He begins:

Tea partiers tend to revere the U.S. Constitution in much the same way that many American evangelicals revere the Bible, which is to say they read it without comprehension, looking only for ammunition that can be used against their enemies. And since neither text was written for such a purpose, this so-called reverence is an exercise in illiteracy.

And it gets better from there:

“Stupid or evil?” is really just a way of exploring whether or not someone has provided sufficient evidence for us to conclude that they are not acting in good faith. The distinction may not seem to matter much, practically. A responsible citizen does not need to know precisely whether O’Donnell is really so astonishingly stupid as to believe what she’s saying here or so mendacious that she does not care that it is ridiculously false. Either way, she is clearly unfit for office.

The real kicker: what O’Donnell said in this context was that Obama was acting contrary to the Constitution because of the use of the word “czar” for some advisory positions, and we all know the Constitution insists quite clear that we don’t grant titles of nobility in this country.

No one is that stupid.

Dept. of Amazing Television

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And when I saw “amazing,” I mean “holy crap, it’s amazing something that unremittingly shitty can exist.”

After giving up on the Texans, I started browing the Tivo guide. On Syfy, we have the following on offer:

2:00 PM – Cyclops
“A corrupt emperor forces a soldier to fight a single-eyed giant in a gladiatorial arena.” Starring Eric Roberts, of course.
4:00 PM – Yeti
“A legendary beast terrorizes members of a college football team after their plane crashes in the snowy Himalayas.” Really? We can’t get anyone to play Hawaii because they’re too far away, and somehow you’ve got a college football team in goddamn *Tibet*? I mean, I’m all about suspension of disbelief — I love Doctor Who, for crying out loud — but this is a bridge too far.
6:00 PM – Ogre
“Young hikers travel to a small village where an ogre requires an annual human sacrifice.” Obligatory washed-up star: John “Was He Bo Or Luke?” Schneider. Rumors of Mel Gibson in the eponymous role are sadly just that.
8:00 PM – Madrake
“Adventurers on a jungle expedition encounter a half-plant, half-animal creature out for blood.” At least this time the victims knew what they were getting into, unless they were the sorts of yuppie “adventurers” who pay through the nose to bag Tibetan peaks by getting short-roped to a sherpa. As for half-plant, half-animal creatures, the less said of Christine O’Donnell, the better. Perhaps the Mandrake’s murderous ire was aroused by too much adventurer onanism?
10:00 PM – Abominable
“A disabled man tries to warn others about a legendary beast roaming the California mountains.” Sigh. At this point, we’re safe to assume they’re not even trying.

In a word: Whew!

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The Tide got it done yesterday to stay perfect, but it was way too close for my taste — though a win is a win. I’ve got nothing but respect for Ryan Mallett now, and hope very very much that the Arkansas QB elects to go pro early; that guy is crazy good, but I expect that the Hogs will go back to being a fair-to-middlin’ SEC squad without him.

Update: Polls are just plain weird. Alabama garners more first-place votes as a result of the quality road win yesterday, but Arkansas — the former #10 team who played 4 quarters of solid football only to lose a squeaker against the number one team in the country — drops to #15. That’s just bizarre. Shouldn’t you EXPECT #10 to lose to #1?

The merger’s not done yet, but the sucking and lying starts now.

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Continental is no longer partnering with Amex on either Membership Rewards points or Presidents’ Club access, starting in one year.

From the site:

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Continental Airlines withdrawing from participation in the American Express Membership Rewards and Airport Club Access programs?

Continental’s agreements to participate in these programs expire Sept. 30, 2011 and we have decided not to renew the agreements. Continental continues to offer many options for OnePass mileage earning and redemption opportunities as well as Presidents Club access.

Note that this is not actually an answer.

Is this decision the result of Continental’s merger with United Airlines?

The decision to end Continental’s participation in the American Express Airport Club Access and Membership Rewards programs is not related to Continental’s merger with United Airlines.

Note that this answer is almost certainly a lie. You can tell in part because answers to simple yes or no questions that do not begin with “yes” or “no,” and that go one for this many words, are almost all lies. By reading further, it’s also easy to see how brazenly mendacious the CO people are being.

I’ve already started doing most of my flying on Southwest for other reasons. My guess is that this will seal that deal even further, though my AX points are useless there, too. (The moral there is “all airlines hate you,” by the way.)

BTW, Amex is trying to make it less painful, but it’s still going to suck:

Amex is also trying to hang on to some Continental and other airline fans with a new benefit for Platinum and Centurion (a k a, “Black Card”) customers. Starting Dec. 1, you can register your favored airline with Amex and it will waive up to $200 in fees (like those for baggage checking, in-flight food purchases, airport club day passes and flight changes) with that airline each year.

The remaining domestic airlines partnered with Amex are AirTran, Delta, Frontier, and JetBlue. Of those, the latter may be useful to us, but the rest are less interesting. Time to schedule a bigass CO trip with my AX points, methinks.

This dead 89-year-old woman is way more badass than you are

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Check it out:

LONDON — After she died earlier this month, a frail 89-year-old alone in a flat in the British seaside town of Torquay, Eileen Nearne, her body undiscovered for several days, was listed by local officials as a candidate for what is known in Britain as a council burial, or what in the past was called a pauper’s grave. […]

But after the police looked through her possessions, including a Croix de Guerre medal awarded to her by the French government after World War II, the obscurity Ms. Nearne had cultivated for decades began to slip away.

Known to her neighbors as an insistently private woman who loved cats and revealed almost nothing about her past, she has emerged as a heroine in the tortured story of Nazi-occupied France, one of the secret agents who helped prepare the French resistance for the D-Day landings in June 1944.

Go read the obit.

What a smackdown looks like, NYROB edition

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I’m immortalizing this below, in case the New York Review Of Books ever takes it down:

In response to Words from the July 15, 2010 issue

To the Editors:

It is truly discouraging to see, in a column by Tony Judt about sensitivity to language, “inchoate” used as a synonym for “chaotic” [“Words,” NYR, July 15]. Although this solecism is quite common, it still pains the ears of those few of us who are sensitive to the etymological resonances of English words. Didn’t Professor Judt learn Latin at the fancy school he went to?

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”—Tom Paine

Sam Abrams
Rochester, New York

Before his death on August 6, Tony Judt replied as follows:

Like most people of your kind, you assume too much: regarding both what I wrote and what you are qualified to infer. “Inchoate” means: “Just begun, incipient; in an initial or early stage; hence elementary, imperfect, undeveloped, immature” (OED). And that is just what I meant — the words begin to form but do not complete. If I had meant to say that they were “chaotic” I would have said so.

At the “fancy school” I attended (my education cost precisely nothing from the age of five to twenty-four: what about yours?) I was taught Latin, but also how to distinguish between knowledge and pedantry. I am glad to say that forty years later I can still smell the difference at fifty yards.

Ever notice how Constitutional Originalists tend to be dicks?

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Yeah, me too. Herein find a discussion of Scalia’s apparent opinion that sex discrimination is constitutionally sound, since the “original intent” of the authors of the Constitution and the 14th amendment surely wasn’t to make women complete citizens.

Originalism seems more an excuse for holding unreconstructed 18th century views on white, male privilege than an actual respectable legal theory. (Are there any pro-choice originalists, I wonder? My guess: No, because originalism is an intellectual port of convenience for people who want to restrict that and other behaviors protected by the notion of Constitutional privacy, which was vague and uncertain prior to Griswold and Roe.)

(Confidential to R.M., formerly of Jackson: Not you.)

9/22/09 + 1 Year

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A year ago, I flew home quickly from Kansas and went straight to the critical care clinic, where Erin and I and Sharon said goodbye to Bob. September 23 was the first day ever that Erin and I woke up without our little fuzzy pal.

Our house has two cats now. We lasted not quite a month before we tried to fill the hole in our hearts with two kittens, but they just wormed their way into entirely new areas and left the Bob-shaped cavity pretty much as it was. I still sometimes forget she’s not here, in the night, or when I’m moving through the house and a corner of shadow looks inky and fuzzy enough to be my old girl.

We love Saracen and Wiggins. They were made to be ours. They picked us, at the rescue site, as much as we picked them. Saracen thinks Erin hung the moon, and follows her around like a puppy. She stalks and captures all manner of small textiles when we’re not looking, which means our house actually does have a tiny gremlin who steals socks. Wiggins is absolutely fascinated with just about everything I do, and spends a good chunk of every day insisting her way into my lap. She vocalizes more than any animal I’ve ever seen, which is hilarious, and has invented a game for herself involving our stairs and wine corks. They romp and run through the house like the juveniles they are, and then collapse together in the increaseingly-too-small-for-them cat condo, or in extra chairs, or next to us on the couch when they’re done.

But neither of them are Bob, and in some ways they’re both still strangers compared to her. And I still miss my girl even though I love these new guys, too.