I hate the tv

From the amount of publicity it’s gotten, the Exxon Valdez could easily be thought to be the largest oil spill in history. Actually, it’s only the 53rd largest according to this page. Coming in at 11 million gallons, it seems puny compared to the largest spill, 240 million gallons spilt off the coast of Kuwait in 1991. Also of note is the second largest, 140 MG spilled on the gulf coast of Mexico June 3rd, 1979.

Thinking about it, this could be the source of the black tar spots (like the one shown above) that I knew to be common along the South and Central Florida coast that I knew growing up. At the beach access bridges, where we’d walk over the sand dunes, there were always little stations with kerosein which were to be used to get the tar off the bottom of your feet. It seemed so natural…

The Changing World from the BBC had a moving piece by Vera Frankl on kids who were tried as adults under the whole “get tough on crime” political fad of the 1980 and 90s. Part two of the piece hit much closer to home as it covers the situation of four guys who are serving terms of life in prison for things from accidental homicide to attempted robbery in which someone else in the robbing party shot and killed someone. One of the 16 year olds helped a friend who killed his abusive mother try to cover up that crime.

For these men sentences as boys, there is apparently no hope of parole and no hope of review of their case. Once the decision was made by the DA to try these kids as adults, there is no going back. They are also kept in the same maximum security prisons that adults are. Children as young as 14 can end up in with adult murders!

After hearing this piece, I feel there’s a need for a review of this system. There should at least be a chance for the case and sentence to be reviewed after 10 years or so. As the sister Jennifer of one of the prisoners, Trevor Jones, points out: “I still keep in touch with a lot of my childhood friends; nobody is the same person that they were when they were 16. You change, you change so much. So of course [Trevor] is not the same person [now]. How could he be”.

@ The Changing World
Download the MP3s directly here:

Part 1: This issue in Pakistan

Part 2: This issue in Colorado
Web Version

For 100 pounds sterling you can buy a yak for some needy Tibetian children…

I applaud the people who thought this one up….seems like a very concrete, practical way to help someone directly…

It looks like Save the Children has a fairly good rating on Charity Navigator, too.
Found this thru the inq.

Bullshit. Bullshit! bullshit. This study from the Reason Foundation makes an interesting read for anyone who’s dieing to avoid the obvious facts. There are no numbers produced and no scientific rigor exercised.

So many holes that I won’t even address them, except with this (from this website):

According to the 1999 Reason Foundation Annual Report, top funders include: C. Boyden Gray and David Koch (each individually contributed $25,000 or more in 1999), the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the JM Foundation, Charles G. Koch Foundation, Lilly Endowmet, Scaife Family Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Sunmark Foundation. Corporate Donors in 1999 included: American Farm Bureau Federation, American Forest and Paper Association, American Petroleum Institute, American Plastics Council, ARCO Foundation, BP Amoco, CA Building Industry Association, Chemical Manufacturers Association, Chevron Corporation, Chlorine Chemistry Council, Clorox, Coca-Cola, American and Continental Airlines, Daimler Chrysler Corp, Dow Chemical, Eastman Chemical, Edison Electric Institute, ENRON, Exxon Mobil, FMC Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Kimberly-Clark, Koch Industries, Koch Materials, Eli Lilly, Microsoft, National Air Transportation Association, National Beer Wholesalers, National Soft Drink Association, Pfizer, Inc, Philip Morris, Procter and Gamble, Shell Oil, Sun America, Union Carbide Corporation, United Airlines, Western States Petroleum, Watson Land Company, Whole Foods Market, Winston and Strawn.

They obviously have an agenda.

I ran into it via this, then this.

Narrated by a Russian tourist in North Korea, this collection of photographs gives a rare look at what would be seen by a tourist to the country.

These are a translation of this page in Russian.
Author/Photographer: Artemii Lebedev
Thanks Militaryphotos.net

I ran into this ass-kicking piece at Gin and Tacos immediate after the 2k4 travesty of an election. I felt that it was dead on in many respects, but I didn’t have this site working back then….So It gets posted now. Here’s a Snippet:

These votes come from the suburbs (tax cuts) and rural areas (abortion, gay marriage). Can you think of two places more insulated from the regressive economic and international policies of this administration? Look at the decision-making process of a suburban voter. The war? Who cares. Junior’s in an expensive private school, and that ACT tutor is gonna make sure he gets into a 4th-rate college with two directional adjectives in its name. The economy? Come on, daddy’s the person who does the outsourcing, not the one who gets outsourced. Terrorism? Those attacks happen in big cities. Cuts to government programs? Well that’s just more urban poor to shuttle into the army. Or prison. Need more of those.

As a cynic, I’ve developed a certain disdain for the patent system. Mainly because of companies like the new SCO, which is a company that bought the SCO unix rights and makes a business out of trying to enforce patent infringement claims. Sure, if your stuff gets ripped off, and you defend yourself thats ok. But I find it repulsive when people who don’t do the creating, who’ve just bought the rights, start throwing their weight around saying “That’s our idea and you have to pay for it”. I doubt very much that the code monkeys who wrote the products the new SCO now is protecting feel good about accusing the whole linux community of mass patent infringement.

Similarly disgusting is the music industry, with the example standing out of Michael Jackson outbidding Paul McCartney for the rights to most of the Beatles music.

As an American, especially as an engineer, you get fed this story that you can make it big by inventing something, patenting it and selling it to everyone over the television late at night. In a simplistic view, the patent system seems great and would be the “ticket outa here” of many aspiring home inventors. Practically, though, the situation is much less rosy as Don Lancaster eloquently explains in his article “A Case Against Patents”.

Snip:
“Finally, be realistic. You don’t create things to get filthy
rich. You create things because you like to create things
and have some compelling desire or need to do so. As long
as there are enough nickels to keep going, that is all that
should really matter.”

From the inq, A guy who wrote an open source program to allow a computer to hook up to a model train has been hit with some nasty letters and some legal threats from a Japanese company who claims he is infringing on their patents. The project on sourceforge has not been shut down, so it looks like the author is not bowing to the pressure.

This issue is going to come up over and over in the near future so we need to be very diligent and ensure that correct precidents are set. The nature of software nowadays is that many people will be concurrently developing just about everything. If it doesn’t exist yet, wait a little while and it will. With this amount of development, patents just stifle innovation. Keeping in mind that patents were meant to encourage innovation by providing a timed monopoly to the pating party in exchange for showing how something is done.

Harry Taylor lobs a non-softball at the president. The president is not entirely caught off guard, so the coaching is working to some extent.

Quite a stinkeye he provides though.

Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, seen below, is apparantly known for wearing non-descript brown garb. Now that he’s a cardinal he joked a bit about the new red outfit.

“Cardinal-designate Sean P. O’Malley told Boston reporters that he told the tailor, ‘I could always wear it if I was called to be on a hunting expedition with the vice president,’ Dick Cheney. ‘It’s very red.’”

From here and here. Thanks Chris!