What Will They Do At The Side Of The Highway Next?

I can't help it if he took a liking to me!

Jailing him, Judge Alistair McCallum told Hoyle "Never before in my time at the bar or on the bench have I ever had to deal with somebody who voluntarily allowed himself to be buggered by a dog on the public highway. Frankly it is beyond most of our comprehension. It is an absolutely disgusting thing for members of the public to have to witness.

That's right, folks, this guy had sex with a dog by the side of the road. Some people have too much free time, that's all there is to it.


Apparently, it's not just a myth: getting plastered is part of the Australian lifestyle. Or, at least, that's what the Aussies think:

The National Drug and Alcohol Research Council study of 1,500 Australians found that some 58 percent of people agreed that sometimes having too much to drink was "simply part of the Australian way of life."

In other news, I am packing my bags and moving to Oz.

Want to hear the worst excuse ever from an executive? Try this one on for size: after posting an unrecedented 14 million dollar loss in the third quarter this year, Overstock.com 's president, Patrick Byrne, wrote a letter explaining the problem to investors. he said:

My bad.

No kidding. Thankfully for said investors, he's been removed. About time, too; in the meantime, they've gained a reputation as one of the worst online retailers in the world, just look here.

In ever-so-useful-science news, researchers are now saying they may have figured out how your brain tells time. Our polls suggest the not-so-surprising response, that no-one gives a crap about this.

Falling under the Ok, God Really DOES Hate You category, a Baptist minister got electrocuted during a baptism. In a stroke of genius, he was standing in water, playing with electrical equipment, when all of a sudden, BOOM!

All I could see was this real bright light...

I'm guessing the use of a microphone was God's way of making sure he got the message. Hah.
Maybe He wanted to make sure the audience heard him loud and clear. Heh.
...Or maybe it was just because he was indoors, and God didn't want to miss.

The Canadians are invading Mars. No, I mean it! Apropos of nothing, I wish John Candy were still around. He'd know what to do about this. Or, should I say aboot?
Yes. That was a Canadian joke. Deal with it, eh?

Irish strippers are supporting the peace process. How? By changing the uniform they wiggle out of from the Royal Ulster Constabulary uniform to the uniform of the Police Service Of Northern Ireland. Not, I suspect, that this makes much difference to the men who pay to look at the dancers; I cannot imagine getting upset by the uniform the stripper is shortly going to leave in a wrinkled mess on the floor, when you could be looking at a naked woman, but who knows? When you do some of the things the Irish have traditionally done for entertainment, maybe the clothing the stripper gets out of is actually of some political value to you. Especially before the barflies realize that they're strippers, not cops:

'It's really funny when they walk into a bar. They think they are being raided,' he said. Once, however, the fans of his strippers realise it's not the real PSNI, they relax, Dowey added. 'In fact, they love it. It doesn't matter what part of the country we're in. The stauncher the area, whether it's Catholic or Protestant, the better the response. We're really popular in Crossmaglen.'

Just a word of warning, Mr. Dowey: it's all fun and games until someone tells the Provos.

M. Night Shyamalan, whose name you may recognize as that of the director of The Sixth Sense and Signs, thinks that releasing movies on DVD at the same time as in the theater will put all the theaters in America out of business. I mean, after all, why watch a movie on a 50-foot screen with surround sound, when you could watch it at home on your 20-inch TV in mono? I ask you! (Note to Mr. Shyamalan: some of us are poor, and can't afford huge home entertainment centers. Really, watching a movie for $8 may not happen every weekend, but it sure beats $2000 for a big screen, surround sound kit, entertainment center, and DVD player, not to mention the movie itself. Just a thought.)

Yet another trainwreck from Microsoft: DRM that "protects" legally-purchased music and video content may prevent you from performing hardware upgrades in a fashion similar to that of Windows Product Activation. Just beware of Windows Update right now:

Microsoft's DRM also has another recent issue in that the installation of Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005 may cause DRM protected content to no longer play, since this rollup updates the OS's DRM. So far they are still working on the problem and the only work around is to recover the licenses as with a hardware change and that assumes the user made a license backup before installing the Update Rollup 2.

That's right, update your OS and watch you music collection vanish without a trace. When are people going to learn that this DRM nightmare is going to destroy the music and movie industries? Probably, at a guess, around the time that huge, massive failures of newly purchased products begin showing up... which will be right around the time that Microsoft releases Windows Vista.

I can't wait for the day my computer doesn't "trust" your computer and we, therefore, cannot play online games together, visit the same websites, use the same messenger services, watch the same video clips, listen to the same music, or even send each other office documents through email until you completely upgrade both your computer hardware and your OS for a cost of several thousand dollars! Whoopee!
(You think I'm kidding? Read some of Microsoft's documentation on their "trusted computing" concept for Windows Vista. It's on their website.)

God Bless The Stupid - They Keep Us Entertained, Don't They?

World's Dumbest Bank Robber!

A note handed to a bank teller demanding $20, $50 and $100 bills "the quicker the better" was written on a pay stub that led police to a robbery suspect even though the name and address were crossed out with a marker.
"It wasn't a huge forensic undertaking," Steven Moran, Bensalem director of public safety, said Wednesday. "We just put it under a light."

That's right, folks, he told the bank his full name and address!


In a stroke of genius, MIT grads fail to reproduce something that Kevin Pereira from Attack of the Show on G4 managed - Archimedes' Death Ray. Seriously - AotS televised theirs, and got it to burn up CDs, Wood, Paper, and anything else they put in front of it, yet MIT guys can't set fire to a boat?
Shows the quality of the US education system, doesn't it? Don't believe the G4 guys can outsmart MIT? Take a look at SolarDeathRay.com!

Anne Rice, author of dozens of novels about vampires, mummies, and other mythical creepy-crawlies, got Jesus. And now she wants to tell you about it in her new book. Sadly, since I don't really care, this plug on my page is all she gets out of me about it.

Ok, I admit I'm not avant-garde, but I think the HMMWV limosines are ass-ugly, and for that reason I can't imagine trying to car-jack one. But this guy did.
Sadly, in his infinite genius, he forgot to check if it was empty first. It wasn't, and the 15 people in the back gave him the beat-down of a lifetime.
*ahem* WAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHA!! *coughcough* That is all. Thank you.

Super-soldiers aren't just science fiction anymore! Now they're real!
Or, at least, they soon will be, according to these researchers.
No word, of course, on whether said researchers ever bothered to watch to the end of any of those hundreds of movies about super-soldiers to see what the inevitable results of "superior" humans will be.

In a move surprising no-one, more and more companies are banning blogs. Or that's what you'd think based on the title of this article on Wired News. Turns out if you read it, though that that's not entirely an accurate representation of the issue.

What's more, says Mason, such practices are becoming prevalent in corporate America, particularly in financial services. Mason sits on a roundtable privacy group of 20 of the country's largest banks. "My best understanding is that my company's anti-blog stance is the industry norm," he says.

But when you look at the article, you find out that what this actually is, is more and more companies demanding that instead of reading blogs at work, you ACTUALLY DO WTF THEY PAY YOU TO DO.
Oh, my God. How totally unreasonable and uptight of them.

I guess we were misinterpreting this guy's conduct: the man and woman in Cleveland who kept 11 retarded kids in cages in their house say they are tired of being "misrepresented." Um - if it has bars, it's a cage. I mean it. You bastard.

Speaking of bastards, ever read the End User License Agreement that you have to click "I Accept" on before installing any piece of computer software by any company anywhere ever? You should, indeed. It would make you cringe, all those perfectly legal things that you're agreeing to when you click that button.
This bit, for example: (with supporting editorializing from TGDaily)

Some EULA clauses allow software manufacturers to monitor your machine at will - DRM being a good example - and send data back and forth at will. They can even download new content onto your machine without having to notify you - anything from an innocuous patch to full blown spyware.

For example take Section 6 of the Pinnacle Studio 9 movie-making EULA:

You acknowledge and agree that in order to protect the integrity of certain third party content, Pinnacle and/or its licensors may provide for Software security related updates that will be automatically downloaded and installed on your computer. Such security related updates may impair the Software (and any other software on your computer which specifically depends on the Software) including disabling your ability to copy and/or play 'secure' content, i.e. content protected by digital rights management.

Amazing. So what you're saying is that you can, once we install your software, download stuff to our computers without our knowledge or permission, which can basically do anything to our computers that you want ti to and we can't say no?

Seti@home ought to try this approach.


And a final editorial tidbit just to finish out the day:

The Stupid.
A race all to themselves, transcending traditional ethnic, political, religious, or gender groupings, they breed much faster than everyone else, they produce less, consume more, and are in no way contributors to the advancement of humanity.
You know it's true; you've met them. They're everywhere.
They're also the solution to the global energy crisis.
See, most of the world uses petroleum, also known as crude oil in case any of them are among my three readers, to power their industries, both in the electrical sense and in the raw material sense. (Who doesn't use plastics these days?) Sadly, petroleum is a diminishing natural resource created by the process of plant decay, which means that someday we'll run out.
Unless...
If we can figure out a way to extract petrochemical precursors from The Stupid, we can produce crude oil in chemical plants. This would lead to the independence of the US from foreign oil, the end of Alaskan drilling and other oil-related things that make PETA twitch, and a vast supply of the raw materials to make plastic, which would cause the price of basically every product marketed in the US to drop drastically.
Oh, yes, it's possible: all the chemicals which make up crude oil exist in human beings, just in the wrong proportions.
And, since The Stupid breed faster than anyone else (they do, google it) they are not only renewable, but barring plague, it would be impossible for demand to exceed supply for the first time in the history of the world.
Amazing! A way for The Stupid to transcend their limitations and become, for the first time, a real, productive part of society, and that using only what they come equipped with naturally.
The problem, of course, becomes one of diplomacy: how do we convince The Stupid to donate their bodies to the Petrochemical Reclamation Organized National Guideline?(PRONG?) That part's easy, I'd say: give 1/3 the reclaimed value of their body, and 1/6th each per offspring, to The Stupid as a tax credit. Most of The Stupid are poor as well (though not all)
and therefore their tax impact would be minimal in any event, and this allows them to die naturally, with dignity, and merely be reclaimed for society, rather than using valuable farmland for cemetaries and polluting our atmosphere with cremation fumes and ash.


Of course, if you're offended by my idea, let me say that this is / was a satire, intended as a homage to Swift's essay about famine; (look up "A Modest Proposal.") It is not meant seriously, blah blah blah.

And if you're not one of The Stupid, doesn't it sound like a really great idea?

Oddly Enough...

My Hero!

The Cape Cod Times says Kennedy was walking his dogs when he noticed six fisherman trapped on a jetty by rising tides. The tides made it difficult to walk back to shore.

Kennedy and a friend tried to reach the men using a 13-foot boat but rough waters forced them back. Firefighters were called and they brought the trapped men to safety.

...actually, not so much.
Ted Kennedy, who any of you might know is one of my FAVORITE people, attempts to rescue a bunch of people for the publicity value.. and messes it up. What a surprise.


Reaching a new height, or low (to be more accurate) in the field of good sense and deep thought, the candidate running against Hillary Clinton for her New York Senate seat sent a letter out to all the voters she could find, wanting donations... including Hillary Clinton.
Now, I personally think Hillary Clinton couldn't disappear fast enough, but that does stretch the bounds of "reasonable and prudent fundraising."
Go check out the very sensible Jeanine Pirro at her website.

In a classic case of "Well, Duh!" a reporter tells us that movies made from video games suck. No kidding.
And "Doom" will suck, and thanks to the involvement of Mr. Revision And Total Disregard For The Source Material himself, Peter Jackson, "Halo" will indubitably suck too.
However, I have to say, I do disagree with two of the reporter's choices: "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" and "Mortal Kombat." I grant that RE2 didn't make much money, but it was actually a hell of a lot better movie than the first one; sadly, as a sequel, most of the people who would have watched it had it been the first movie never gave it a chance. MK sucked, granted, but you can't hate a movie that makes 2 1/2 times its cost in sweet, sweet profits for the studios.

Now you, too can get a speeding ticket even if you're parked: I present to you the LTI 20-20 Ultralyte laser "radar" gun.

After testing American-specifcation laser speed guns, London's Daily Mail newspaper concludes that the popular LTI 20-20 Ultralyte model is prone to "wild" errors. Specifically, a wall was found to travel at 44 MPH, an empty road 33 MPH, a parked car 22 MPH, and a slow-moving bicycle at 66 MPH. These findings match those of the BBC who investigated the same device in March and September.

No kidding.

God bless Florida, for giving us so much really valuable entertainment: now they've arrested a stuffed llama, and The Smoking Gun.com was there! I don't really know what else to say about this; somehow complaints that the police must have better things to do fall by the wayside when confronted by something of the complete silliness this demonstrates.

And finally, an update on my mention of Jack Thompson's lunacy yesterday: it's ok, folks, the charity is going to get its money, because Gabe and Tycho are donating it for him. In his name.

Gotta love Tuesday morning, don'tcha?

Another Dose Of Me$$ed - Up $h*t, Yo...

He didn't die from the Tazers, noooooo...

"There is no evidence that any of the restraint techniques used that night, including the Taser, directly caused Mr. Lee's cardiac arrest and death," Levy said. "The combined effects of multiple applications of the Taser, pepper spray and physical force on someone in excited delirium are unclear and require additional research."

Really. they shocked this guy 19 freakin times, hit him with pepper spray, and then beat him, and are somehow surprised that he just plain up and died on them.
Wow.


Ever wonder why no-one's ever managed to catch Bigfoot, The Abominable Snowman, or the Loch Ness Monster?
Because it never PAID this much before, that's why!

A Maine scientist is preparing to release details of a $1 million reward for a photograph that leads to the live capture of Bigfoot, the abominable snowman or the Loch Ness Monster.

That's right. Some unnamed company is offering A MILLION DOLLARS to anyone who can produce a photo or other evidence that leads to the capture and permanent retention of a live specimen of any of the big three.
Get out your tranq guns! Wooohoooo!

Never let it be said that Great Britain is behind the times; on the contrary, they're taking huge leaps into future totalitarianism all by themselves, thank you.
What's really cold is that not only are they now requiring biometric ID cards for all citizens and resident aliens, but they're CHARGING them for it... a LOT, too. 93 pounds, (162 US dollars, thanks,) actually, for the ID card and passport. Which is, errr... a lot of money for a hackable identity theft "prevention" device.

Since the word "dwarf," which has an actual meaning not synonymous with "midget," is no longer an acceptable term, you may soon be watching Snow White and the Seven... Gnomes?!?
No word yet, of course, on what the gnome population has to say about this.
And for those of you who are curious, here's the low-down: a "midget" is someone of normal physical proportion, but extremely diminutive height. A dwarf is someone who is equally short, but has unusual physical proportions as well; for example, having a normal torso, arms, and head, but extremely small legs.
It's not an insult, it's a descriptive term referring to a particular genetic phenotype. So shut the hell up about it, already.

You know you're having a terrible day when you get your mask on, grab your gun, and go to rob a beauty salon full of women - and they laugh you right out of the store empty-handed.
Not only am I not kidding, it's actually WORSE than I make it sound. The LITTLE OLD LADY in the store was making fun of him.
Damn. Reminds me of an old Pacino movie, for some reason.

The REAL LIFE Operation Blue Crush took place the other night; Memphis cops, after a two-month "sting" operation involving both local law enforcement and researchers from the University of Memphis arrested a bunch of evil drug dealers.
No big deal, right?
So WTF is this news?
I'll tell you why, and I'll do it right now.

Memphis police say brazen drug dealers are behind bars after a sting operation called "Operation Blue Crush". All is quiet at 3293 Rosamond. That's because the alleged gang members who took over the house are in jail. Police say the suspects were so bold they advertised the fact that this was a crack house. When they were open for business, they'd flip an address sign over that read "Crack house".

Yeah. Read that last bit again.
It took two months, dozens of law enforcement professionals, and researchers from Memphis U. to arrest a bunch of drug dealers who PUT A FUCKING SIGN ON THEIR FRONT DOOR.
I would use words like "astonishing," "amazing," or "fantastic" except that those words usually have GOOD connotations.
So instead, I'm going to use "appalling," "ridiculous," and "total frigging waste of taxpayer dollars, right there."
I mean, DAMN.


It's long past time Asian women started having huge, overdeveloped breasts, wouldn't you say? Well, Taiwanese band Girls F4 think so, anyway. They got breast augmentations to bring them up to size, but went a bit overboard. They're no longer sex symbols; they're a 'source of social chaos'.
No kidding.

The members who call themselves Fanny, Amy, Stacy and Tiffany made their debut on Taiwanese television in July and it was clear that their F cups runneth over.

They charge about NT$100,000 ($5,260) per appearance for flaunting their assets on air and they have been kept busy despite criticism from Taiwan's first lady, Madam Wu Shu-chen that they were a 'source of social chaos'.

Now, see, THAT is "astonishing," "amazing," and "fantastic."
Just so you can see the difference.

You can feel secure now: because there aren't any other, more serious threats to your online safety out there, Microsoft is working with Nigeria to do away with 419 scams. That's right: not viruses, not identity theft, not fraudulent website duplication, oh no: the greatest threat to your safety is emails from Nigeria, promising millions if you give them your bank account number.
And, of course, this will be dealt with using the style, elegance, and panache that has become a Microsoft trademark.

Good news again for those of us who hate the RIAA and its huge, money-grubbing gorilla squad, led my MediaSentry, Inc.: the feds say spyware is an illegal trespass against your home computer. What does this mean? Well, it means that lady in Oregon is almost certainly going to win her lawsuit, for one. For two, it means that the RIAA and MediaSentry are going to have to find a new way to find out what you do online, rather than giving you spyware without your knowledge. For three, it means all you poor bastards who can't get rid of CoolWebSearch, Alexa, or Gator can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

One of videogaming's most vehement, outspoken critics has finally gone off the deep end. Jack Thompson, a lawyer from Florida, has proposed a videogame predicated entirely on the idea of mass-murdering videogame industry workers, and offered the industry a $10,000 dollar charity donation on their behalf if any company will make his game. No, I'm SERIOUS. He really DID say that.
The article goes on to say that

We'll keep you updated, however, as it is very likely that there will be some sort of response to Thompson's proposal from members of the videogame industry.

And whoa, were they ever right. I'm not even going to attempt to recount the saga to you in its entirety; check it out what Gabe said to Good Ol' Jack here.
I will add a note: yes, someone did take him up on it - and he welshed. Take a look.

And Finally:
In a total departure from the norm, here is evidence that there are, occasionally, smart people on the other team; a Democrat tells us why Dr. Condi Rice will be the next President of the United States if Hillary Clinton runs.
As it happens, this is exactly the scenario I've been propounding for the last year or more to anyone who would listen; Hillary WILL run in 2008, make no mistake. And despite her denials, she's poised to do exactly the same thing to New York that her husband did to Arkansas - she's going to leave mid-term for her new job if she wins, leaving her current responsibilities unfinished.
The thing is, some people are so bright that they honestly believe that a woman will be a good president just because she's a woman. The irony of the fact that the same people who think this are the ones who've been screaming loudest for the abolition of sexism seems to escape the media.
It's nevertheless true that they DO believe it, though, and that leaves the Republicans in a bind. See, with Dick Cheney's health failing, John McCain's approval rating in the toilet, and Rudy Giuliani's politics too far to the left for the hard conservatives, they have no obvious candidate who can oppose Hillary Clinton - except the extra-conservative, non-criminal, self-made, unmarried, black, female Dr. Condoleeza Rice.
Make no mistake - this is a nightmare for the Democrats. With the Democrat party leadership in turmoil following John Kerry's defeat in 2004, Hillary has the Democratic nomination sewn up in a way nearly unprecedented in Presidential races, but the core of the voters who would vote for her will also vote for Dr. Rice, leaving the already electorally-challenged Democrats in serious trouble.
Don't think so?
Place bets on whether Dr. Rice will get the black vote - the First African-American President EVAR!!!
Not only is she a woman, but she's never pandered to a philandering manslut - and thus has the women's vote, too.
Any minority is better than none, and so she gets the Hispanic and Asian votes, as well.
She's very conservative, and a self-made woman; the Republican constituency is in the bag.
This, on top of the fact that one of the great bastions of liberal electoral votes (California)is teetering on the edge of going red, puts the Democrats in serious danger of losing the White House until 2016.
Think I'm kidding? Let's look at California first. Despite having been almost traditionally a blue state, in the last election, the margin of the popular vote was less than 2% in favor of the Dems; 150,000 voters going indie would have put California in the red. Add that to the fact that California has their first Republican governor in years, and despite the media trying their best, Arnie just plain hasn't stubbed his toe seriously so far, and you have a state in serious danger of giving the Republicans an electoral majority so vast as to be literally unassailable. The Dems literally do not have an electoral map which allows them to win the Presidency without California.
Secondly, IF (and I stress if) Dr. Rice gets elected, after the scandals of the Clinton administration and the blunders of the Bush administration, all Dr. Rice would need to do to get re-elected is not screw up. So far she hasn't shown any great tendency to make major, catastrophic blunders, which doesn't bode well for the Dems. All their hype notwithstanding, let's be clear: they've elected one president since 1980. They did manage to elect him twice, but still: if Dr. Rice gets elected, the Dems will be 2 for 7, since 1980.
GO CONDI IN '08!

No Steenkin' Slow News Day Here, I Tell You

This is gonna be a two-parter: the first will be the usual weird news, but then I'm gonna talk about a woman who is my personal hero right now, and her travails with a commercial entity never far from my hate locker, the RIAA.
But first:

75,000 Toyota Priuses are being called in for repairs because of a software bug. I mean it. Aren't you glad you drive an old clunker with no computer control, like me? You don't? Oooooo. Sucks to be you, when you car turns itself off in the middle of the freeway because of a software fault.
Heh.
No, seriously, that can happen, apparently:

Sixty-eight incidents of Prius warning lights flashing without cause or engines shutting down have been reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Toyota spokeswoman added. NHTSA has not asked for a recall, but has told Toyota to notify owners. The automaker is doing that through letters.

Now, the good news is that since the Prius has two engines, the gas one and an electric one, so far drivers have been able to get their car to the side of the road safely. However, coming as this does in the middle of the latest advertising blitz from Toyota, this is at least a minor pothole in the road, so to speak, for them. Especially as the new ads loudly tout the Prius and the hybrid-drive cars by Toyota as the solution to air pollution, asking "What if the air were clean again? Toyota is doing it with hybrid engine technologies." Which begs the question, how is it better to have a non-polluting car that doesn't work, than a polluting one that does?

Oddly enough, the interesting part of this article is right near the end. Like, down near the bottom, where after ranting about how using cops as a taxi service for legislators is bad (duh!) they admit that the one Tennessee State Representative who had a broken foot, Henri Brooks, (who rode with a cop because, apparently, a taxi wasn't good enough) stayed for two weeks in the state capitol in an apartment paid for by the Black Caucus.
Why is that interesting?
Well, to me it seems like the State Rep's ample salary could manage a hotel room.
Failing that, there ARE guest accommodations made available at every state capitol I ever heard of for the legislators.
However, this representative - and I use the term loosely - stayed in town long enough to make a crucial legislative session, voting on a bill which directly concerned the issues favored by the Black Caucus - in an apartment paid for by the group lobbying for his vote on the bill.
YAAAAAAAAY CORRUPTION IN GOVERNMENT!! Way to go, Tennessee.

Anyone remember the scene in "Total Recall" when Arnold goes through the security scanner that represents him as a skeleton and reveals his hidden weapon? Well, Farran Systems remembers it quite well, thanks.

The scanner uses 3mm microwaves to scan people as they walk through a booth. Its sensors detect thermal energy emitted by the body as well as microwaves being reflected from objects.

Clothes become transparent, but denser objects, such as plastic explosives or other weapons, show up clearly against the background thermal image of the body. Everyday items like door keys and money will also be clearly visible as will liquids and non metallic items.

That means that people hoping to smuggle weapons onto planes using non-ferrous materials will soon be out of luck. Maybe we can catch the next batch of guys before they scream "Allahla! It's a BOMB!" Oh, here's the Tadar homepage.

The writing is on the wall for sperm donors, at least in Sweden; a man who donated sperm so that two lesbians could have a child is being held responsible for child support, now that the two women have separated. There's only really one thing I can say to that: bear in mind that having seen that happen, you will just have to look a lot farther to try to find another man willing to take that kind of risk. Hey lesbians: welcome to the club; you, too, now have The One Jackass Who Screws It Up For Everybody Else.

In case you, like millions of others, believe that The Evil Insurance Companies Are Out To Screw You, Just Not Mine, guess what: you're wrong. The insurance companies don't give a rat's ass about you, or anything other than their bottom line. You want to know how I know this? I'll tell. you. Look at what Farmer's is doing to try to get out of paying this woman's insurance claim.
The really bad part is that they might get away with it; state law in Washington says that it's technically not an accident if the person responsible intended to cause the crash. Of course, on none of the occasions when law enforcement personnel have talked to the responsible driver has he mentioned the victim; chances are he doesn't even know she got hurt. However, apparently, that's enough to keep Farmer's from having to open up their wallet.
Let's be clear: this woman pays monthly for two MILLION dollars of coverage - her premiums have to be sky-high - and now that she's in an accident, and horribly injured, her insurance company is refusing to pay because they say the other guy did it on purpose.
I personally feel that the people at Farmer's who are responsible for this SNAFU ought to have their legs run over, and be beaten into a nine-day coma so they can see how they like it, but then, I believe in justice.
Vote with your wallet; don't buy from Farmer's until they pay Ms. Adams' claim.

Of course, it doesn't seem to matter where in the US you live these days; Ohio's not any smarter than Washington or Tennessee, apparently. I know, because they ARRESTED a woman for A DOLLAR of owed CITY taxes. No, I mean it; they really did!
And then, actually had the gall to act as though this was the Right Thing To Do:

Loveland City Manager Fred Enderle said the amount Combs owes isn't the real issue.

"Whether it's $1 they owe us or $1,000, it's not fair to the rest of the public to not pursue that person," he said. "There is some expense involved, but it goes back to the principle. We have laws. The laws have to be complied with. At what cost do you stop enforcing the law?"

I'd say, at the point when you can get the person to pay the fine by walking up to them and asking for their freakin' pocket change. But that's just me, I guess.

Good news for any of you who are foul-mouthed and twitchy: they've located a gene linked to Tourette's Syndrome, a CNS malady often mis-represented in movies by people who swear a lot.
In fact this disease causes sufferers to have both verbal and physical spasms, which are uncontrollable and I'm guessing more than a tad unpleasant for them.
In any event, they appear to have located a gene linked to the syndrome, which bodes well for future therapies. While it's not likely to prove to be the one and only gene involved, at least it's a step in the right direction.

Don't You Wish You Had This Guy Around Presents: Weston, Florida roofer Marty Davis. While roofing the
Broege home, he heard calls for help from inside, climbed down, and went to Wiebke Broege's side, just in time to deliver her baby.
That's right.
Wait'll they get THAT contractor's bill.
But seriously, apparently he did a great job, and had enough time to be worried about getting roofing tar on their floors. Good thing he was there; Ms. Broege would have been in serious trouble otherwise, as the labor was so swift that Davis had delivered the baby before paramedics arrived.
Good job, Mr. Davis. Seriously. You'd be My Hero this week if the job wasn't already filled. (more on that later.)

Proving that Okies JUST HAVE TO do everything worse than anyone else, apparently someone has already figured out how to beat the Oklahoma Lottery, despite the fact that it's only 24 hours old.
Amazing.

Newsflash: Dark Matter may not actually exist after all. Physicists are surprised, Einstein isn't, and William of Occam is laughing his head off. (Occam is most famous for "Occam's Razor," which states that the simplest explanation which fits the facts is most likely correct.) Apparently, he was right.
Gee, you think?

For once, a community is glad for a motorcycle gang. Well, ok, it might be a bit hard to call the American Legion Riders a "gang." But the town of Chelsea, Kansas was awfully glad the VFW members' motorcycle "club" was around on Tuesday.
See, a bunch of REALLY SMART people, really NICE people, people with NO COMMON FRIGGING HUMAN DECENCY, from the Westboro Baptist Church decided to protest A FUNERAL for a soldier killed overseas, because they believe U.S. soldiers are dying because it's "God's punishment for protecting homosexuals."
Because the VFW is basically not down with that happy crap, over 100 members of the American Legion Riders surrounded the protesters and drowned them out by revving their motorcycle engines, and blocking them away from the funeral.
Veterans of Foreign Wars, I salute you twice: for your service overseas, and your continuing service at home.
Hey, religious fanatics: there's a time and place for everything. Leave those poor people to bury their son in peace.

Oh, and let me just say: if you intend to embarrass your wife publicly by asking for a divorce on a huge roadside banner, it's best to make sure she doesn't also own a marker and a bedsheet.
Dumbass.


And now, on to the main event:

A 41 year old disabled woman in Oregon is the latest victim of the RIAA's terror campaign against their customers. Business as usual, right?
Wrong.
Sadly for them, this time they seem to have made any number of huge, damaging mistakes, leaving them open for criminal prosecution under Oregon's RICO statutes.
That's right, the anti-mafia laws.
Here's why:

RIAA Debt Collection center agents phoned Ms. Andersen and accused her of illegally stealing copyrighted "gangster rap" music online. The phone agents also admitted that their affliates had secretly obtained information off of her personal PC. Ms. Andersen claims to have never downloaded music online and appears to be quite repulsed by this RIAA extortion act. She has counter-sued the RIAA on numerous charges and has demanded a trial by jury.

And what's really cool is that because it's a counter-suit, it's automatically entitled to a jury trial. See, the RIAA's tactic thus far has been to scare the hell out of people with threats and then get them to settle out of court, rather than going to trial at all. But this time, because of the way they dealt with her, she's got them coming and going; either they did in fact hack her computer, in which case they are guilty of computer crimes and subject to criminal prosecution, or they didn't hack her, in which case they are in violation of the RICO laws - and federal anti-fraud laws, violation of which is a felony.
Whoooooo.
What does this mean? Well, at a minimum, it means she will get to take her case to trial, and since it's a counter-suit, the only way the RIAA can get it to go away short of the courtroom is to dismiss their claims against her, which lets her (maybe) get away with downloading "gangsta rap" for free.
I will be watching to see how this plays out, especially since she seems to have a very competent lawyer, who has the case sewn up several different ways; according to the complaint, there's no way the RIAA can deny any individual part of the complaint without admitting that they did in fact commit an illegal act.
Nasty.
More info can be found at Recording Industry Vs. The People.