How quickly will Rand Paul implode?

Libtard patriarch Ron Paul’s son Rand won the GOP Senate primary in Kentucky this week, which was a big damn deal considering how the GOP establishment lined up behind his opponent. Ordinarily, I’d be all over this despite being across the ideological aisle from either Paul, since pretty much any smack to the GOP is a good one in my book. However…

It turns out the younger Paul (and maybe the older; apples and trees and all that) has such a doctrinaire view of state power and private property that he, apparently, opposes the provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that made it illegal to run a public business in a discriminatory way — i.e., the provisions that made segregated lunch counters illegal. He won’t come right out and say it, since it’s clear what will happen if he does, but on Rachel Maddow he came very close despite tapdancing around her questions and throwing out gun-rights nonsequitors. I don’t think his general election Democratic challenger is likely to miss this, and it seems like Paul is the sort of guy who doesn’t see the implications of his position — or how dramatically out of the mainstream they are, or how explosive that kind of revelation is likely to be. One of his lines in the Maddow interview was something like “I don’t know why we’re discussing a 40 year old law,” but “how would you vote on legislation like X” is a perfectly legitimate question to put to a candidate; he won’t get far with that kind of defense.

The video is long (about 20 minutes), but Maddow and Paul are able to have a respectful conversation about this despite Paul’s clear unwillingness to answer Maddow’s oft-repeated question with a straight answer.

Here’s a Free Tip

When you coldcall me to try to sell my company something and suggest that “my company president said we should call you,” it’s more convincing if you can actually NAME the president in question.

When I ask that you email me your information, it’s also better if your PDF of talking points has actually been proofread, explains what you’re selling, and has a clear pitch the explains why I want it. A shotgun approach of unconnected capabilities and features is rarely the way to a sale.

Finally, if I reply with questions and explicitly state at the bottom of my mail that you should reply in email, not call me directly, why on earth would you call me? And when I point out your failure to honor my request, maybe it’s not a good idea to get defensive and suggest that you’re somehow doing me a favor.

Wow. Just wow.

Wired on the Lost Tribes of RadioShack

As a child of the 70s in a small town, Radio Shack was one of the only places I found where technology was just there to play with or even, if I saved my nickels even take home. My first computer came from a Radio Shack, and I sure wasn’t alone in that (hi, Rob!).

Back then, a Radio Shack was a haven of parts and gadgets and equipment for Serious Knowledgeable Hobbyists. Need a diode and a new soldering iron? Gotcha. Radio kit? Of course. And those wonderful 101-project kits defined my childhood. But it’s all gone now, for the most part, because people just don’t want diodes and soldering irons and DIY electronics anymore, and now all Radio Shack does is sell batteries and cell phones.

Anyway, Wired gets it.

What ought to be criminal, and yet isn’t

A Puerto Rican prosecutor decided the porn DVD an American man was carrying featured an underage performer based on pretty much his own judgement (plus that of compliant, prosecutor-friendly “experts” who made no effort to acquire legal proof of age), and decided to prosecute him — this despite the fact that actress in question, like all law-abiding adult performers in the U.S., had proof of age on file and easily acquirable. The only thing that saved the defendant? The performer’s unaccountable willingness to fly to San Juan, show her passport, and testify under oath.

Click through to Radley Balko’s site for more (totally SFW); it’s absolutely absurd. A man spent months incarcerated for child porn because the prosecutor was on a power trip. Said prosecutor will likely suffer no consequences even though the defense made it very, very clear that the woman in question was of age.

Instead, the prosecutor pushed ahead with child pornography charges against Simon-Timmerman, even after the man’s attorney was able to show that Fuentes had appeared in movies produced in the U.S., as well as other documentation that Fuentes was of legal age at the time the movie was made.

Hernandez-Vega still didn’t buy it. Her evidence that Fuentes was a minor was apparently so strong that she not only apparently felt she didn’t need to take 15 minutes to look up the proof of Fuentes’ age on file with the federal government, she could also dismiss the evidence produced by Simon-Timmerman’s attorney that his client hadn’t broken any law — all while keeping Simon-Timmerman locked up for months.

And what was that evidence? “Expert” testimony. At trial, Hernandez-Vega called Alek Pacheco, A U.S. Customs agent and self-described expert in child pornography who concluded (presumably after viewing the video several times) that Fuentes was “13 or 14” years of age.

And now for a completely different kind of nerdery

A British sniper has taken the longest-sniper-shot record from the Canuck who bagged it last year. Both the old record (2,757 yards) and the new one (2,707) are about one and a half MILES. Oh, and he did it three times in a row, since after taking out two bad guys he destroyed their machine gun, too.

I’m not sure if it’s more or less impressive, given its sniper-specific provenance, but the new record was made with the relatively modern, smaller, lighter, and shorter-ranged .338 Lapua round, not the venerable .50 BMG used by the Canadian. (An American made a similarly impressive if much shorter shot at 1,367 yards with a 7.62NATO in 2005; the 7.62mm does not have the reach of the Lapua or .50.)

The real nerdery of this story, though, comes from the strange editing choices made in its presentation. I assume the range of Corporal Harrison’s shot was provided by the UK military to the press in meters, and yet it was converted to Imperial units for publication. This part makes sense, because as I understand it, the British public still “thinks” in those units (just like we Yanks).

However, the calibers of the weapons mentioned are completely inscrutable, since they’ve also “helpfully” converted the Imperial names to metric. This is weird and probably wrong.

Caliber names do have their roots in bullet (projectile) diameter, and express that diameter in either Imperial units (as a fraction of an inch — a .45 bullet is just under half an inch in diameter) or metric (e.g. 9mm). However, once named they are typically considered “proper nouns” stylistically, and not converted, for reasons of precision, because bullet diameter is only one measurement when it comes to defining a round. There’s also bullet weight, case dimensions, and (importantly) length and powder load, variances in all of which produce a different round that probably requires a different gun to shoot safely.

Consequently, “9mm” is always 9mm, even in the U.S. where we think with inches, partially because there are several handguns (and several more rifles!) that use bullets of roughly that diameter — .38 Special, .357 Magnum, .357 Sig, .380, etc. There is no ambiguity in saying “9mm”. There’s plenty of imprecision, though, if you just refer to the bullet size.

All this means that converting the “real” name — in this case, .338 Lapua and .50 BMG — to metric is just plain weird if not outright incorrect, and leads to reader annoyance. I had to go to Google to determine what the hell caliber he’d used, since 8.59mm means nothing to me. 12.7mm was big enough I was pretty sure what they meant, but odds are that the bullets for both guns were marked in fractions of inches.

But anyway: A mile and a half. Three times in a row. Damn.

Lives Saved by Rock and Roll

Today’s best phrase: [H]ow a fourth-hand Rat pedal and a borrowed Peavey Bandit can save your life for a little while, from Merlin’s post about music, heros, and saving your soul. (Also, Merlin has excellent taste in heros.)

I don’t think I can overstate how completely TRUE this post is. He totally nails it in all sorts of ways. Plus, I had the “Kurt Bloch” experience with Pat DiNizio in a Memphis bar called Alex’s one time, and it went pretty much the same way. For a certain class of misanthropic types — especially folks like me, and Merlin, who grew up far away from the music centers of our youth — Lou Reed wasn’t kidding or exaggerating when he talked about lives being saved by rock and roll. He was telling the gospel truth.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to run the cats out of my office by playing the stereo as God, Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman, and Pat DiNizio intended. Roadrunner once, roadrunner twice…

Continental to Houston: Drop Dead

Houston’s hometown airline has agreed to merge with industry fuckwits and apotheosis of customer hostility United — and relocate to Chicago! — thereby ensuring that all further Heathen air travel will be on Southwest.

Fuck you, United. Every time I’ve ever flown a United plane, you’ve screwed me. You once lost my bags between LAX and SFO, for crying out loud. Granted, you’re bigger than Continental, but in Houston we’ve typically been able to choose between two highly decorated airlines from a customer satisfaction perspective: Southwest and Continental. United’s always been a joke from a customer service perspective, so we figure it’s that culture that will predominate in the new United.

Oh, how we love Jon Stewart

He’s all over Apple on PhoneGate:

“Apple – you guys were the rebels, man, the underdogs. People believed in you. But now, are you becoming the man? Remember back in 1984, you had those awesome ads about overthrowing Big Brother? Look in the mirror, man! …It wasn’t supposed to be this way – Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one! But you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes! What the fuck is going on?!

…I know that it is slightly agitating that a blog dedicated to technology published all that stuff about your new phone. And you didn’t order the police to bust down the doors, right? I’d be pissed too, but you didn’t have to go all Minority Report on his ass! I mean, if you wanna break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone! I mean, seriously! How do you drop four calls in a one-mile stretch of the West Side Highway! There’re no buildings around! What, does the open space confuse AT&T’s signal?!

Where Apple Is Going

This gives us a clue. The Apple Design Awards are traditionally given to extraordinary software developers working on Apple platforms, but as of this year, coders working on OSX are no longer eligable: it’s all about the iPhone and iPad only, which of course Apple controls with an iron fist.

It’s been fun to use OSX these last 10 years or so, but it’s becoming more and more clear that the Pilgrim solution may be in my future. I think Lightroom is the only thing I’d really have trouble replacing.

My assumption is that they did this because Arizona was out-bigoting them

Mississippi high school excises gay teen from senior yearbook.

Update: Arizona hits back: Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill today that removes year-old domestic partner benefits from state employees.

“A bill signed by Gov. Jan Brewer redefined a ‘dependent,’ canceling the rule change made by Gov. Janet Napolitano that allowed domestic partners to receive benefits. Also eliminated are children of domestic partners, full-time students ages 23-24 and disabled adult dependents. The legislation is in legal review. About 800 state employees are affected, according to the state’s administration department…Liz Sawyer, a UA staff member, said the exclusion is ‘deplorable and it’s tragic.’ Sawyer is a spokeswoman for OUTReach, a staff group that lobbies for domestic-partner benefits at UA. Last year 170 UA employees signed up for domestic-partner benefits, she said. Forty were same-sex couples and the remainder were unmarried, opposite-sex couples, she said.”

Did God tell Brewer to do it?

“Gov. Jan Brewer said Wednesday that she believes ‘God has placed me in this powerful position as Arizona’s governor’ to help the state weather its troubles. In a wide-ranging speech on the role of religion in politics and in her life, Brewer detailed to a group of pastors of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church how she relies on her faith and in prayer to deal with many of the issues she faces as the state’s chief executive. Brewer also said there are times when, during a meeting with staffers, one will suggest praying about an issue. … But Brewer also said she recognizes the difference between bringing her faith to the office and having an ‘agenda.’ … ‘The problem with having a political agenda is that we give the impression that we have God’s truth,’ the governor said. ‘We think we can convert God’s truth into a political platform, a set of political issues, and that there is ‘God’s way’ in our politics,’ Brewer continued. ‘I don’t believe that for a moment, any more than you believe that God’s way is exclusively the Lutheran way.’ The governor said, though, she believes it is right — if not inevitable — that elected officials bring their faith to their offices.”

Gag.

(Original link here.)

GM are absurd and brazen liars

Fortunately, Reason is watching:

GM CEO Ed Whitacre announced in a Wall Street Journal column last Wednesday that his company has paid back its government bailout loan “in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule.”

[…]

Uncle Sam gave GM $49.5 billion last summer in aid to finance its bankruptcy. (If it hadn’t, the company, which couldn’t raise this kind of money from private lenders, would have been forced into liquidation, its assets sold for scrap.) So when Whitacre publishes a column with the headline, “The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full,” most ordinary mortals unfamiliar with bailout minutia would assume that he is alluding to the entire $49.5 billion. That, however, is far from the case.

Because a loan of such a huge amount would have been politically controversial, the Obama administration handed GM only $6.7 billion as a pure loan. (It asked for only a 7 percent interest rate — a very sweet deal considering that GM bonds at that time were trading below junk level.) The vast bulk of the bailout money was transferred to GM through the purchase of 60.8 percent equity stake in the company — arguably an even worse deal for taxpayers than the loan, given that the equity position requires them to bear the risk of the investment without any guaranteed return. (The Canadian government likewise gave GM $1.4 billion as a pure loan, and another $8.1 billion for an 11.7 percent equity stake. The U.S. and Canadian government together own 72.5 percent of the company.)

But when Whitacre says GM has paid back the bailout money in full, he means not the entire $49.5 billion—the loan and the equity. In fact, he avoids all mention of that figure in his column. He means only the $6.7 billion loan amount.

But wait! Even that’s not the full story given that GM, which has not yet broken even, much less turned a profit, can’t pay even this puny amount from its own earnings.

So how is it paying it?

As it turns out, the Obama administration put $13.4 billion of the aid money as “working capital” in an escrow account when the company was in bankruptcy. The company is using this escrow money — government money — to pay back the government loan.

GM claims that the fact that it is even using the escrow money to pay back the loan instead of using it all to shore itself up shows that it is on the road to recovery. That actually would be a positive development—although hardly one worth hyping in ads and columns — if it were not for a further plot twist.

Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research, points out that the company has applied to the Department of Energy for $10 billion in low (5 percent) interest loan to retool its plants to meet the government’s tougher new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. However, giving GM more taxpayer money on top of the existing bailout would have been a political disaster for the Obama administration and a PR debacle for the company. Paying back the small bailout loan makes the new — and bigger — DOE loan much more feasible.

In short, GM is using government money to pay back government money to get more government money. And at a 2 percent lower interest rate at that. This is a nifty scheme to refinance GM’s government debt — not pay it back!

There’s more. Click through.

Monday Morning Treme Notes

We noticed last night that the song Dr. John was rehearsing in NYC (with Albert’s son, among others) was actually the same song Albert and his Indian colleagues (many of whom are actual Mardis Gras Indians) were singing, a capella, at the end of the episode in honor of their dead wild man. But what we didn’t notice was that the outro music, under the credits, was the same song yet a third time.

Nor did we realize, until I Googled around a little today, that the instrumental version was by Donald Harrison, Jr., a respected jazz sax player who is himself the son of Donald Harrison, Sr., a former chief of the Guardians of the Flame tribe — which is the tribe Clarke Peters’ Albert Lambreaux leads on the show. As the linked blogger notes, it’s probably not a stretch to think that Lambreaux is meant to be a composite based on the elder Harrison (same tribe, jazz player for a son, etc.). Harrison Jr. even cameoed earlier (playing sax with Delmond Lambreaux in NYC gigs in an earlier ep), and serves as a consultant to the show.

I’d previously wondered if Peters’ character was meant to be Tootie Montana, the legendary chief of chiefs who died the summer before the storm, but the Harrison parallel fits much better (especially since Montana was namechecked by Dr. John in the rehearsal scene). Fun fact: Montana’s cousin plays Antoine Batiste’s current squeeze on the show.

Apparently, Blue Cross Hates Women

Get breast cancer? Prepare to get dropped.

The women all paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, none had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.

They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.

Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. […]

That tens of thousands of Americans lost their health insurance shortly after being diagnosed with life-threatening, expensive medical conditions has been well documented by law enforcement agencies, state regulators and a congressional committee. Insurance companies have used the practice, known as “rescission,” for years. And a congressional committee last year said WellPoint was one of the worst offenders.

But WellPoint also has specifically targeted women with breast cancer for aggressive investigation with the intent to cancel their policies, federal investigators told Reuters.

This is why we needed the HCR bill. This is why the bill won’t be the last bill we need.

More on the Gizmodo iPhone

Gizmodo gives a bit more analysis of the whole thing here, and also considers why Apple couldn’t find the phone.

This whole affair is just hilarious; the rapid fanboy fringe is positively frothy over self-serving interpretations of journalistic ethics and obscure readings of California’s lost property statute — and a few are even upset that Gawker Media wasn’t sufficiently deferential to the Apple counsel who formally requested the return of the phone. GMAFB. Gawker are, proudly, tabloid journalists. They had a shot at the hottest gadget scoop of the year, and they by-God took it. Good for them. Apple may not like it, but that’s the way the game is played.

Next time you think you’re having a bad day at work, remember Gray Powell

Who is he? He’s the Apple engineer who, while field testing the new, unreleased 4th generation iPhone, left it in a bar, which led directly to Gizmodo’s hands-on feature. Scoop city for Gizmodo, hot water for Powell.

Oops. Apple is infamous for their security. There are virtually no leaks that they don’t orchestrate, and actual hardware leaks are, I believe, unprecedented. I hope Mr Powell doesn’t lose his job over this, but it wouldn’t at all surprise me. Consider that I’ve seen the “this is a shot of Steve Jobs’ office from earlier today” gag several places already.

There’s lots of whining from [pro-Apple](http://ihnatko.com/2010/04/19/the-increasingly-plausible-miraculous-engadget-and-gizmodo-iphone-4g/] fanboy-ish blogs (some of which I enjoy — but don’t pretend Gruber and Ihnatko aren’t fanboys), but it’s hard to blame folks like Nick Denton for running with this. Journalism, especially tech journalism, runs on the scoop, and Gawker Media found themselves in the proverbial catbird seat here (Ihnatko’s story was written early on; it’s since come to light that Gawker did indeed pay someone for the phone, which was apparently left behind in a bar (see first link)). Andy insists that Gawker have explaining to do, but I disagree: all the explanation we need is already there:

  • It’s a real unreleased Apple product; and
  • They got it.

Since they ran the story, their servers have been slammed. Cheap pageviews are one thing, but pageviews based on having a real scoop that nobody else has? That’s something else again, and it puts money in Gawker Media’s pockets, and bonuses in the employee’s accounts to pulled this off for Chairman Nick.

“Why You Shouldn’t Be Celebrating Confederate History Month”

Spot on:

The Confederacy, the secessions that led up to it, and the Civil War which followed, were about slavery. It is offensive that apologists would seek to whitewash this or, worse yet, deny it outright. As one of the guys who first described the Civil War (accurately) as “treason in defense of slavery” puts it, “Having our patriotism and love for the United States questioned by people who lionize the worst traitors in American history is bloody irritating.”

[…]

When confronted with words like “treason,” Confederate apologists like to mention that the Founding Fathers committed treason against England, and suggest that we celebrate the Founders because they won. It’s true that everyone likes a winner better, but that doesn’t mean that the Confederates were freedom fighters and the moral equivalents of the Founders. The Founders fought for the freedom of all men, and even though they fell short of realizing that ideal, they wanted to expand freedom rather than restrict it.

By contrast, the ordinances of secession adopted by Alabama, Texas, and Virginia make particular reference to the status of the seceding states, including themselves, as states whose laws authorize the ownership of slaves. The declarations of secession accompanying some of those ordinances, authored by special conventions of the states of South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi, you’ll see that they are all about slavery, expansion of slavery to the territories, return of fugitive slaves, and a refusal to submit to the lawful election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency because of his hostility to slavery. […]

But:

So if you are from the South, you have no need to apologize for the Confederacy. Even if your ancestors include men who fought and died for the Confederacy, this is not a matter which ought to cause anyone today to evaluate you as any different than anyone else. You are not your ancestors. You have to make your own choices, and one of those choices includes deciding whether or not to be proud of a Confederate ancestry. If I had Confederate soldiers among my ancestors (I don’t think I do, but you never know) I’d say I respected their bravery, and that I understood why they might have thought they were fighting for their country. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. But at the end of the day, they were fighting for a morally indefensible cause and while I might prefer to remain silent about that, if forced I would have to admit that yes, I thought they were on the wrong side of the war.

Treason in defense of slavery is not a subject matter appropriate for any freedom loving people to celebrate. The Civil War had good guys and it had bad guys. The good guys were the ones who won.

TL;DR? The Civil War was unabashedly about two things: Treason and Slavery, both promulgated by the Confederates. The good guys won. EOT.

(Via Accordian Guy.)