Posts with tag: Absurdity

5 May 2010

Another Great Drug War Moment

From Radley Balko: In February, I wrote the following about a drug raid in Missouri: SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family’s pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on. They found a “small amount” of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.

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In
18 Apr 2010

23,000

…Deaths in the last three years of Mexico’s drug war. While U.S. prohibitions create thousands of criminals, Calderón reassures us they’re mostly killing each other. Of course plenty of cops, govt. officials, and innocent kids are in that figure, too. With the Mexican economy going South—especially tourism—parents will just have to hope their children don’t

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In
18 Apr 2010

I eat Green Berets for breakfast, and right now I’m very hungry.

(NSFW)

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In
17 Apr 2010

Patent Absurdity

Don’t miss Patent Absurdity, a free half-hour documentary that “explores the case of software patents and the history of judicial activism that led to their rise, and the harm being done to software developers and the wider economy.” When you open the page, the embedded video begins without human interaction, a violation of an Eolas

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In
12 Mar 2010

It could always be worse

OccasionallyVery infrequently, with help from my caffeine addiction and Intense Focus On Writing Awesome Code For Employers Who May Read This, empty Coke Zero cans will slowly accumulate in my vicinity. I couldn’t say how many. In the worst of times enough to not want to know how many. This morning I stumbled across a

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In
3 Feb 2010

AFA Leader Would Like to Fix Gays by Force of Law

I support the American Family Association’s right to pay for the Tebow ad—Americans have no right to not see promotions of ideas they might disagree with—but the AFA’s new leader, Rev. Bryan Fischer, should be watched. He has an interesting idea to fix a country that’s so broken that gays can…continue to exist: Fischer suggests we

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In
11 Jan 2010

Tercy and the Insufferable Incline

Kathleen and I have been lucky enough to be able to carpool until now, leaving our neglected Tercel “Tercy” (see right) to the rats and other inhabitants. The Good: runs well, good mileage, heat works. Bad: cramped driver’s seat, smells kinda like feet, back doors don’t open from outside, battery leaks out in a few

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In
24 Oct 2009

First Flourine Bomb Victim

Kansas resident Mike Nolan was the victim of a vicious bombing according to news agency “Fox4kc”. We’re still awaiting word from DHS about troop deployment to Overland Park.

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In
22 Oct 2009

ToDo: War on Terror Accounting

With all the talk of whether or not to increase troops in Afghanistan, and the ethics of killing from your armchair, I think a group needs to sit down and study the full costs and benefits of these wars. As provoking as tragedies like 9/11 are, if we assign value to “innocent” human lives equally

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In
22 Oct 2009

Reasonable People May Not Show

(Obviously started in August) In the age of Glenn Beck, the town hall meeting paradigm is just the anonymous web forum with no moderator. The people interested in genuine discussion won’t go near it, and “socialist!” is the new “yr gay”. To this extent the tea party folks have certainly been successful at churning out

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In
22 Oct 2009

Smallest valid HTML documents

HTML4 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN”> <title></title> <p> HTML5 <!DOCTYPE html> Smallest “useful” HTML5 document <!DOCTYPE html> <link rel=stylesheet href=site.css> <script src=site.js></script> <title>Page Title</title> <h1>Heading</h1> <p>Content… Check em if you want. To avoid problems in IE you might want an opening body tag, but you don’t need a closing one!

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In
6 Feb 2009

Zero Tolerance Nets Another Slimebag

What if we had zero tolerance for laws that have a lot of ugly side effects? Like busting an amazing teacher in front of her kids… for finding a couple Xanax pills… in a suspicion-less search of her car. Herrick, 59, has taught at Roberts for 17 years. Parents describe her as “inspirational,” “talented” and

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In
15 Jan 2009

New Think of the Children argument

Daniel Rodriguez said there’s no such thing as a healthy discussion about legalizing drugs because young people take their cues from adult conversation. “There are things I believe should not be open for discussion, and this is one of them,” he said. [El Paso Newspaper Tree] Thank goodness we now have more excuses to stifle

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In
13 Jan 2009

Effective Drug Warrior Posturing 101

When a policy doesn’t work no matter how many dollars and officers you throw at it, how do you keep the lights on and the citizens engaged? Well, histrionics, demonization, war propagandizing, and hysteria have worked wonders in the past. Let’s listen to the President of the Philippines give them a shot: … she ordered

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In
13 Dec 2008

No Imagination Means No Change

“I don’t mind adopting a policy that seems strange to you if the result of it is going to make society improved…” – William F. Buckley Jr. re: drug legalization When drug policy reformers say “legalization”, it strikes fear into persons who have only experienced and imagined society under the effects of modern drug prohibitions.

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In
1 Dec 2008

Mankind is still capable of monstrocity

If you’ve fooled yourself that this is not true, you need only to check yesterday’s New York Times to sober up. In cultures where women still have little value, for at least a dozen years some men have thrown acid on the faces of women, and are rarely punished. In a recent case, girls with

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In
30 Nov 2008

More Drug War Victims Pile Up

Our War on Drugs has turned Mexico into a real war zone. Five more dead in Tijuana; 685 in one city in the last year; young men in rival cartels are gunned down, tortured, mutilated, beheaded, found in mass graves. Those who can afford to have left town, while the rest of the city lives

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In
14 Oct 2008

Learning from the Free Market

When government regulation is completely removed from the picture, business thrives, and one industry has a particularly impressive success story. Its products are produced where costs are low and sold elsewhere with monumental margins. In fact these extraordinary profits help this industry overcome enormous hurdles of distribution; not even incredibly powerful organizations with endless supplies

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In
13 Oct 2008

A faulty argument for policing morality

Recently the Gainesville PD conducted a prostitution sting that busted a particularly vile couple who solicited sex in front of the woman’s six year old son. In addition to the prostitution charge, the woman was rightfully charged with child abuse. I heard about this on the radio, and the report included a quote, I’m guessing

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In
10 Sep 2008

Javascript humor

hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com has a news feed. It also has this in the source: if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == “undefined”)) { document.write(“YUP.”); } else { document.write(“NOPE.”); } Folks without Javascript get a more definite answer: <noscript>NOPE.</noscript> Also appreciated: <!– if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn’t yet updated please email mike@frantic.org to receive a

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