Pete the Elder

Here are some creative new videos that are very literal.

“Random use of candles, empty bottles, and cloth and can you see me through this fan?”.

Read the rest of this entry »

In positive news, it looks like Texas might be getting rid of red light cameras in the near future. I do not like them, mainly because they present several due process and equal protection problems since you are imposing the burden of proof on the driver, who may not even be in the car at the time of the alleged violation and in some cases it is cheaper to pay a fine than to defend yourself in court. Or as my friend Dan learned the hard way, you may not even own the car anymore, but that will not prevent you getting a ticket when someone runs a red light in your old car. Also many municipalities have lowered the time of the amber lights at intersections after installing the cameras in order to generate more revenue, which is appalling since it increases the chance of accidents.

Some Texas cities are trying to lock in last minutes long term camera contracts to get past the legislative ban, which will also ad time to the amber lights for the existing cameras:

As some Texas legislators try to phase out the use of red light cameras, several North Texas cities are countering with new contracts that would have them using the technology for decades more.

The Plano City Council on Tuesday extended its red light contract through 2012. On Thursday, Richardson officials are expected to vote on authorizing a 10-year contract, while Irving will consider an extension to 2013.

Meanwhile, contracts already approved in Mesquite, Arlington, Southlake and University Park are for as much as 20 years.

The cities are working against a Monday deadline set out in a version of the Texas Department of Transportation reauthorization bill. The bill’s contents are in flux, but one possible outcome of the legislation would outlaw new cameras.

In Arizona one judge is standing up to what he sees as unconstitutional uses of speed cameras in his state and he has thrown out thousands of camera tickets. There is also a disturbing case of using the cameras as a way to arrest political opponents:

Arrowhead Justice Court Judge John C. Keegan last week dismissed the photo radar-based reckless driving charges filed against the Executive Director of the Arizona Republican Party. On May 6, officers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS), which is headed by Democrat Roger Vanderpool, showed up at the state GOP headquarters with a speed camera ticket in hand to arrest Brett Mecum, 30. Judge Keegan took the case as an opportunity to reinforce his previous judgment that the Arizona law governing freeway speed cameras is unconstitutional.

“Speed cameras along Arizona’s freeways are an aspect of everyday life for a vast majority of Arizonans,” Keegan wrote. “It is difficult to fathom a trip anywhere within the Phoenix metropolitan area without the omnipresence of the camera. If the statute authorizing the cameras is unconstitutional, the Arizona legislature, by enacting this statute, violates the equal protection rights of thousands of Arizonans every day.”

Keegan argued that it was unlikely that an ordinary motorist could mount a proper legal challenge to the program given that legal fees would amount to thousands of dollars while the maximum fine set by law for a freeway ticket is just $181.50. The state’s freeway program does not issue points against drivers’ licenses.

I really think we need to go back to the practice around the time of the founding where many civil fines would be donated to take care of the poor, which removed the incentive of local governments to abuse fines as a revenue source.

I have been pretty busy lately, but I took today off from work since the wife is at a conference and I needed to take care of our son. So as he runs around outside I am watching him and updating the blog for the first time in a month. So here are a couple of new voting news stories:

First off is Minnesota, where it looks like the Minnesota senate race may be decided by dead voters. Last years senate election is still being fought over in the courts and Minnesota already has very limited fraud protections since anyone can register on the day of the election and can do so without photo ID. It looks like several thousand dead people were also left on the Minnesota voting rolls and it has been confirmed that some votes were cast in the name of these people after they had died. Here are more details:

Today, Minnesota Majority announced the discovery of individuals who were deceased prior to November 4, 2008, yet have voter history records on the secretary of state’s files that indicate they voted in the 2008 General Election.

Minnesota Majority employed a data enhancement service to flag potentially deceased individuals on Minnesota’s voter registration file. Over 2,800 individuals who voted in the 2008 general election were flagged as being “deceased” prior to the election. Minnesota Majority then selected a sample of a dozen records for additional investigation. A representative drove to addresses listed on voter registration records. Interviews conducted with residents or neighbors confirmed that at least 5 individuals from the sample were deceased, the latest having died in March 2007.

In Ohio three Obama campaign workers were convicted of voting there even though they were not residents:

A Franklin County judge told three out-of-state campaigners for Barack Obama who voted here illegally that they should have known better.

The three chose Ohio over their home states — where Obama was likely to win — because they wanted to swing the Electoral College vote toward their candidate, Common Pleas Judge Charles A. Schneider said.

He ordered a year’s probation, a $1,000 fine and a 60-day suspended jail sentence for Daniel “Tate” Hausman, 32, and Amy Little, 50, both of New York, and Yolanda Hippensteele, 30, of California.

And once again ACORN workers have been indicted for illegal voter registration tactics, this time in Pittsburgh:

Authorities in western Pennsylvania have accused seven people who worked for the community group ACORN of falsifying voter-registration forms.

The seven have been charged with either forging, illegally soliciting or illegally filling out voter-registration cards in the lead-up to the 2008 election.

And if you had not heard, Obama plans to have ACORN play a major role in the next census. I can see why he wants that:

The U.S. Census is supposed to be free of politics, but one group with a history of voter fraud, ACORN, is participating in next year’s count, raising concerns about the politicization of the decennial survey.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now signed on as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau in February 2009 to assist with the recruitment of the 1.4 million temporary workers needed to go door-to-door to count every person in the United States — currently believed to be more than 306 million people.

Also in Pennsylvania, the Obama administration overruled career justice department lawyers who were trying to enforce the 1965 Votings Rights Act and decided to drop charges against a group of black panthers who stood outside a polling location last November with clubs and used racial slurs towards people who showed up to vote. A video of the thugs is below the break. Here is that story:

Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms

Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as “the most blatant form of voter intimidation” that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.

Change!
Read the rest of this entry »

This time two former ACORN employees are facing 39 felony charges in Nevada for their registration activities:

Nevada authorities are accusing the political advocacy group ACORN and two former employees of illegally paying canvassers to sign up new voters last year.

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto filed charges Monday alleging the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now had policies requiring employees in Las Vegas to sign up 20 new voters per day or be fired.

Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller and Masto say that’s voter registration fraud, and it violates state law banning quotas for registering new voters.

A criminal complaint filed in Las Vegas Justice Court accuses ACORN and two former employees of 39 low-level felonies.

These charges are a follow up to the investigation I first mentioned here.

Jimmy: Hey, what gives?
Jimmy’s Dad: You said you wanted to live in a world without zinc Jimmy. Well now your car has no battery.
Jimmy: But I promised Betty I’d pick her up by 6:00. I better give her a call.
Jimmy’s Dad: Sorry Jimmy. Without zinc for the rotary mechanism, there are no telephones.
Jimmy: Dear God! What have I done?
(Jimmy pulls out a gun and points it to his head and fires)
Jimmy’s Dad: Think again Jimmy. You see the firing pin in your gun was made out of…yep…zinc.
Jimmy: Come back zinc, Come Back!!

Read the rest of this entry »

Detroit joins the list of cities with more registered voters than actual people eligible to vote.

Detroit election officials confirmed Monday what an analysis of census and population records shows: The city has more registered voters than it has residents over the voting age of 18.

But Detroit is doing nothing wrong. The problem? The 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which took effect in 1995, requires local officials to wait two federal election cycles before purging their voter rolls. That means that all cities carry ineligible voters each year.

Kurt Metzger — director of the Detroit Area Community Information System, the city’s newest data center — did the new analysis using 2000 U.S. Census data, SEMCOG population figures and the age distribution report in the 2007 American Community Survey.

He estimates that Detroit’s population is about 853,000, which includes 603,000 people over 18 — 30,000 fewer than the city reported as its total of registered voters.

And again the National Voter Registration Act is a large part of the problem.

Pro Illegal immigration protesters interrupted a speech by former congressman Tom Tancredo by using threats and mob violence:

UNC-CH police released pepper spray and threatened to use a Taser on student protesters Tuesday evening when a crowd disrupted a speech by former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo opposing in-state tuition benefits to unauthorized immigrants.

Hundreds of protesters converged on Bingham Hall, shouting profanities and accusations of racism while Tancredo and the student who introduced him tried to speak. Minutes into the speech, a protester pounded a window of the classroom until the glass shattered, prompting Tancredo to flee and campus police to shut down the event.

The Deconstructed Man by Alfred Beste was the first ever Hugo Award winner for best novel back in 1953 and it turns out to hold its own pretty well. It describes a world in the distant future where telepathic talent is well developed in significant minority of the population so that “espers” now dominate much of elite society. The esper guild is fairly benign and devoted to enhancing society and one of its major accomplishments is eliminating premeditated murder since it is pretty hard to plan out a murder or other serious crime when you encounter several people a day who can read your thoughts. The plot revolves around an industrial tycoon who decides to murder his chief rival who has brought in a large number of very talented espers to run his business. He develops a plan to do this with the help of several espers who are not happy with the guild, pulls off the murder, and the rest of the book plots out the case made against him by the police.

For the most part this story still works and is reminiscent of works like minority report (which I have yet to read) about technology restricting people’s ability to carry out premeditated crime. The dialog and characters were still interesting and the author was creative in the use of overlapping sentences to convey how a room full of telepaths would communicate with each other. The future technology stuff was not very creative however and the author fell into the trap that science fiction writers from the 50’s fall into with having computers and communications only slightly advancing from their state in the 50s. One interesting twist was requiring the police to present their case to a computer that would predict the chance of conviction in order to secure an indictment. On the whole a decent read.

For all of McCain’s faults, the budget would be a lot closer to being balanced than it will be with Obama. At this rate the national debt will double in the next 10 years with Obama on a pace to add almost 2 trillion in debt this year and more debt than Reagan, H. W. Bush, Clinton, and W. Bush combined over the next 8 years.

God help us all.

Sheep herding - TOO THE MAX!!!

Read the rest of this entry »

I forgot to link to this story from a few weeks ago, but if the Zombie Survival Guide taught us anything, it is to make sure to be on the look out for strange stories in the news that could in fact be a sign of a zombie outbreak. This one hits close to home since it is only an hours drive from here:

Austin drivers making their morning commute were in for a surprise when two road signs on a busy stretch of road were taken over by hackers. The signs near the intersection of Lamar and Martin Luther King boulevards usually warn drivers about upcoming construction, but Monday morning they warned of “zombies ahead.”

The authorities now claim this was all a prank, but I say constant vigilance! People are stockpiling guns and ammunition already because of the Obama administration, but this story is another good reason.

This is a pretty interesting story from a few weeks ago about a chimpanzee’s ability to plan for the future by stockpiling weapons. Here is the story at the Guardian

Santino, a 31-year-old male at Furuvik zoo in Sweden, may be the first animal to exhibit an unambiguous ability to plan for the future, a behaviour many scientists argue is unique to humans. Forward planning takes considerable cognitive skills, because it requires an animal to envisage future events it will have to deal with.

Santino would get agitated when the first groups of visitors arrived at his enclosure in the morning, and would start hurling stones at the spectators. When the zookeepers investigated, they found that, while the zoo was closed, Santino had been busy making piles of ammunition, and returned to them to resupply.

To catch the chimp in action, one zookeeper hid in a room overlooking the enclosure and observed the ape’s behaviour before the zoo gates opened each morning. She saw Santino dragging stones from a protective moat that surrounded his island home, before placing them in piles. Further covert surveillance of the ape revealed he spent some time tapping areas of concrete floor with his fist. Occasionally, the animal would thump harder, releasing chunks of concrete that he broke into rough discs.

A survey of the enclosure showed that Santino made piles of ammunition only on the quarter of the island’s shore that faced the visiting crowds.

The one thing that a chimpanzee has ever been shown to plan for is future violence. That seems pretty in character.

Unfortunately there is still racist voting discrimination going on in Mississippi. But several of the people disenfranchising people have now been brought to justice. See this National review article for more:

The court decision shows that Brown had his own local version of Tammany Hall, and local election officials followed his orders. This included publishing in the local newspaper a list of 174 white Democratic voters whose eligibility he intended to challenge if they tried to vote in an upcoming election. According to the court, Brown compiled the list based on the individuals’ perceived lack of support for black candidates. One voter testified that she was so intimidated she didn’t vote. Another testified that she was so scared she felt she couldn’t approach the polls alone.

The court also found that Brown took measures to ensure that absentee ballots from black voters were automatically counted even if they didn’t comply with Mississippi law, while absentee ballots from white voters with the same deficiencies were challenged and not counted. He even reviewed many absentee ballots the night before an election, placing notes on them saying which should be counted and which should be rejected.

One victim, whose absentee ballot was basically stolen by the defendants and whose signature on the application and ballot envelope were obviously forged, was brought in a second time to testify after she was confronted by a member of the local Democratic party following her initial testimony. The witness was told that “we black people need to stick together” and was urged to testify that she “probably didn’t understand what [she was] being asked” during the first go-around.

The court also found that Brown recruited black individuals to run for office against white incumbents despite knowing that they didn’t meet residency requirements; refused to appoint whites as poll workers; and sent out Democratic party members to give unrequested “assistance” to black voters, marking their ballots for them and telling them how to vote. All of this was intended to dilute the voting strength of white voters and to achieve his goal, which he openly expressed — “that all of the county’s elected officials should be black.”

Texas may be getting rid of them, according to this story from KBTX.

State Representative Carl Isett, of Lubbock has filed a bill to outlaw red-light cameras.

“I immediately contacted him,” said Jim Ash.

If the bill makes it through committee, “i’ll go and testify to what I know about the red-light cameras here in College Station,” said Ash.

Ash thinks he knows a lot, because he’s been doing a little homework.

“This is about 2000 pages of documents,” said Ash. Ash said he obtained the documents through a public records request.

“I’ve reviewed every single line of it.” Ash said the documents all relate to College Station’s red-light cameras.

“This stack of paperwork on my desk, 90% of this is about the money and protecting the income stream.”

Its a conclusion Ash said he finds infuriating.

“When they tell us its about safety and every document I have says its about revenue, it’s wrong.”

According to the documents, an e-mail sent in March of 2007 already projected a 50% drop in red-light camera citations, and red-light camera revenue after the first year the cameras were up.

“The only way to maintain the revenue is to double the number of cameras.”

So far these cameras main effects wherever they have been installed has been to generate local revenue, not actually reduce accidents. And several companies that maintain the cameras have been caught reducing the time of the yellow lights and actually increase the number of accidents in order to generate more revenue.

So here is an example of what The Watchmen would have been like as an ’80s Saturday morning cartoon. (It makes more sense if you have read the book or seen the movie, and I read the book a while ago, but have yet to see the movie have now seen the movie and thought it was a very entertaining and well done movie and was a faithful and thoughtful adaptation of the book.)

Read the rest of this entry »

People seem to either love or hate Songsmith, a new program from Microsoft which lets people remix music while keeping the original vocals. It completely redoes the music to something that sounds like it might make sense, but is from a different genre. Most of the examples I have heard are pretty bad, but here are some OK ones. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t you feel better knowing that congress is overseeing our banks now:

Read the rest of this entry »

As I have written before on this blog:

most mature male chimpanzees will try to kill you if they feel like it

As yet another person is almost killed by a chimpanzee someone kept as a pet:

A 55-year-old woman is in critical condition after a 200-pound chimpanzee attacked her inside a Fairfield County home.

The wild incident happened at approximately 4 p.m. at 241 Rockrimmon Road in Stamford. Sources tell CBS 2 HD the victim was a guest at the home.

The animal later fled the home but was shot and killed by Stamford police. The victim was taken to Stamford Hospital.

CBS 2 HD’s Mary Calvi spoke to neighbors who said they often saw the chimp roaming the streets in the neighborhood, sometimes unleashed.

Someone let a fully grown male chimp with a history of going berserk wander around their neighborhood. The police new about this and even though they had been forced to capture the animal before, did not kill it when it escaped earlier.

I have written about the need to change from paper currency to coins for small denominations before. It looks like the Obama administration may soon have a new motivation for doing so as well, besides saving the government about half a billion dollars a year (which really, does anyone at this point honestly think Obama cares at all about saving money with his trillion dollar stimulus pork/inflation/trade war bill that if not passed in the next five minutes will cause plagues of locusts to descend upon our banks and the unemployed).

Here is the idea from where’s the change:

Since my single, solitary vote is nothing more that a BB in a machine gun world, I intend to start practicing civil disobedience. In the case of Treasury Secretary Geithner, I am going to have a rubber stamp made that says “Tax Cheat!” in block letters. Every time I see a piece of paper currency with Geithner’s signature on it, I am going to stamp over his name with my Tax Cheat stamp. Sure, this action is just as futile as my vote, but eventually maybe others will reach the same conclusion that I have: it is far past time to make our voices heard.

We love the leader!

Students at an elementary school in New Rochelle, NY, a largely Democratic suburb of New York City with a City Council and School Board dominated by Democrats, were recently assigned an in-class assignment to color in drawings of Barack Obama to mark the occasion of the inauguration of the 44th President. The drawings depicted Obama in various heroic poses, flags waving in the background, but one drawing went beyond adulation into overt political activity disguised as a pedagogical exercise. The drawing is a campaign button, in the center of a circle Barack Obama is smiling surrounded by another circle with the words “Students for Obama 2008″.

At least one student objected but her concerns were ignored. “I was mad”, the second grader told Talk of the Sound. “I wanted McCain to win”.

I think it is about time for one of little girl to be “re-educated”.