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Thursday, August 29, 2002
Really interesting piece on the origin of Arab military ineffectiveness.
.: posted by andy 8/29/2002
According to this article (from a Canadian new outlet), there are at least 300,000 psychopaths in Canada. That means the number of dangerously deranged persons in Canada is equivalent to roughly one third of America's armed forces.
.: posted by andy 8/29/2002
A nice add-on the next time you're on vacation in Mexico.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 8/29/2002
.: posted by andy 8/29/2002
Some minor good news. Zero tolerance is bad for so many reasons.
.: posted by Jeremy 8/29/2002
Anybody who's bought anything from amazon.com knows that they try to recommend products based on past purchases and other customer input. I was just recommended Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Now I'm having trouble getting the site to reproduce this recommendation since I bought some other things, though, like a book about turbocharged engines, a portishead CD, Machiavelli's The Prince(I have a theory about my angry vietnamese boss and I've heard the term "Machiavellian" a lot), and a nine inch nails dvd. Anyway, I thought that was mildly disturbing.
.: posted by Jeremy 8/29/2002
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
Satire Wire ist kaput.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 8/27/2002
Did you hear about Delaware's list of likely future criminals? Yup, they're keeping a list of people they think are likely to commit crimes in the future, so that it will be easier to solve crimes. What is wrong with this country?
.: posted by andy 8/27/2002
Holy Crap! I'd better go buy some ammo!
.: posted by andy 8/27/2002
I have new found respect for India. Some college students went to an Indian all-you-can-eat place, and the owner short-changed them. To get their revenge they hired a competitive eater named Theetta, who went to the restaurant and ate until the staff started a fight with him. The police came and ordered the restaurant to keep feeding the man until he was full. Score one for the little man, so to speak. Also, now Theetta is banned from many all-you-can-eat places in India.
.: posted by andy 8/27/2002
Monday, August 26, 2002
.: posted by andy 8/26/2002
The fact that there have been no declarations of war with the wording "the united states of america declares war on the republic of [insert bad guys here]" doesn't, to me, mean that the congress has given up it's constitutional role since the end of WW2. There has been congressional approval for most wars which would probably pass in the supreme court as sufficient or equivalent to a war declaration. I think the Bushies have got it all wrong in claiming not to need any kind of approval for a major military action in iraq. I think this is just part of the old struggle between the branches of government, and nothing new. I bet if congress passed something disapproving any action in iraq, all this talk would be over and done with tomorrow. Congress isn't going to do that though, because they want iraq just as bad as the bushies do, but they don't want to give up any of their power to the exec branch at the same time.
.: posted by Jeremy 8/26/2002
I finally see what the Republicans mean when they talk about reducing the federal government's size. Congress just gets in the way and slows things down. The President needs to be able to act without someone constantly looking over his shoulder.
What a bunch of crap. I guess the last three wars we've fought have been unofficial. What a great way to get around Congress. But invading another country to unseat its government and install one of our own is not a police action. And while the Sept. 14 resolution broadened Bush's powers to fight the War on Terror, invading a foreign country with no officially recognized ties to any active anti-American terrorist group is more than a stretch. It's a leap. I hope someone will reign in the Bush administration. And like Cheney says, it must happen sooner, rather than later.
.: posted by andy 8/26/2002
Legislation to make criminally actionable any news leaks of classified information. I can see how this makes a lot of sense. If I emailed Devin to say I think Jeremy's a bastard, and then Jeremy posted a story on flooz saying that someone thinks he's a bastard, I would suspect that some bastard was monitoring my communications. On the other hand, I hate the idea that our government is becoming more and more secretive all the time.
One benefit of this legislation would be that, were there ever a "leak" of classified information, we would know that it was intentional, and part of the information war governments are always conducting. Instead of wondering whether a leak is legitimate or staged, we would know that they're all staged.
I think that graph implies that there are a lot of socio-economic factors causing a higher rate of criminality among minorities. I'll bet that the percentage of people with the money and influence to stay above and outside the law is so small it wouldn't register. I absolutely agree with your friends' findings about the death penalty. In Texas, killing Mexicans will get you time in prison, but not the death penalty. If you kill some middle class girls at a Yogurt store, you're a goner. It reminds me of the Wild West gunslingers who always gave the number of people they'd killed with the caveat that they didn't count the Mexicans.
.: posted by andy 8/26/2002
Perhaps your graph doesn't imply that there is a racially skewed flaw in the justice system, but that there are social inequities which lead to a higher proportion of minorities being in the 'criminal classes'; or at the very least, a lower proportion with access to the political and judicial pull that has kept ne'er-do-wells like our beloved president out of jail. (What with all this Iraq warmongering, I guess it can be said that drugs do lead to violence.)
An aside, some anti-death penalty friends of mine in Austin were doing research into possible racial prejudice in Texas with the use of the death penalty, looking for some legal challenge. They found that the race of the defendant was not a major factor, but the race of the victim(s) was. So, if you're gonna do capital crimes in Texas and you don't want a needle in your arm, don't kill whitey. A recent example here in Denton county involved a (white) drifter and drug dealer who killed a (black) suspected drug dealer who was 'invading his turf'. Also killed was the (white) innocent straight-A student who happened to be dating the other victim. Most of the trial and sentencing revolved around her, her lost dreams and etc.. Nevermind the other guy, since he was an evil-doer as well, and black; or that she was associating with these drug-dealers, and was present when they were doing a deal.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 8/26/2002
Sunday, August 25, 2002
I was just reading another site that linked this graph as part of an assertion that there are a "disproportionate" number of minorities in jail. Implying that there is some racially skewed flaw in the justice system. That's such a pathetic stretch. Ignoring all other statistical data presented by the federal government, and going to the statistics about imprisonment, in order to back some whacked out far left platform designed to remove culpability from certain sectors of the population based on their skin color. If you look at this one tiny morsel of statistical data without any contextual background, maybe, by reading the graph very quickly and without thinking, and while drinking some fancy Kanadian glacier water and wearing Birkenstocks and chaining yourself to a tree in downtown Seattle, you could so wildly misinterpret that data that you would think that minorities are being done a vastly horrendous injustice. But you couldn't make it all the way from that single wrong-minded far-left fantasy land to posting it on the web without giving it enough thought to realize, even inadvertently, what an ass you are. And yet it happened. The internet is retarded, and I've had quite enough for one night.
.: posted by andy 8/25/2002
Be a hired gun for multinationals.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 8/25/2002
Sometimes I wonder if America's fatal flaw won't be that it forces its president to build a legacy in 4-8 years.
.: posted by Bill 8/25/2002
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